Shane Lowry leads Open Championship despite bizarre photographer beef

Shane Lowry appears likely to hang onto the lead heading into the weekend at the 152nd Open Championship, despite a momentary conflict with a Royal Troon photographer that led to his lone double-bogey of the event.

On the par-4 11th, the Railway — one of the Open's toughest holes that also trifled Rory McIlroy, among many others — Lowry “did the hard part” and bombed his blind tee shot 301 yards onto the narrow fairway. As he set up his second shot, a photographer stood in his line of sight.

“There was a cameraman there and he was walking up, and I asked him to stop or move back, and he just kind of stayed there,” Lowry recalled.

Not only that, but the photographer apparently raised his camera in Lowry's backswing. The 2019 Open champ said the movement caused him to pull his approach left into a thick gorse bush.

“I hit my drive where you could find it, which is obviously a hard thing to do on that hole,” said Lowry, who led the Open field in approach on Friday.” I drew a nice lie in the (right) rough. I got a little bit distracted on the right just as I was over the shot, and I kind of lost a bit of train of thought. You’re so afraid of going right there that I just snagged the club and went left.”

The bizarre ride through the Railway didn't end there.

Lowry's ball was deemed lost. So, he told the R&A officials he was hitting a provisional shot, which he landed approximately 10 feet from the pin. Only moments later, a spectator found Lowry's original ball. The officials instantly negated his provisional shot, and instead forced him to take an unplayable lie.

“I hit a great provisional,” Lowry said. “The referee asked me going down, did I want to find my first one, and I said no. So I assumed that was OK. Then we get down there and somebody had found it. So apparently we have to find it then or you have to go and identify it. I thought if you declared it lost before it was found, you didn't have to go and identify it.”

Before settling on a new spot, Lowry appealed to a second Open official — a process that took about 20 minutes. He ended up dropping his ball in the rough about 10 feet from his original approach, chipped it to 33 feet, then two-putted for a double-bogey 6.

Afterward, Lowry gave himself and his caddie, Darren Reynolds, credit for staying composed during the ordeal.