2024 Open Championship: Shane Lowry bounces back from disastrous 11th hole, shoots 69 to hold clubhouse lead

Shane Lowry's 2024 Open Championship nearly came undone. As all eventual major winners tend to do, though, he leveraged what could have been the long unwinding of a great week and turned it into a second consecutive round in the 60s. At 7 under with the morning wave from the second round concluded, he holds the clubhouse lead at The Open.

After a first-nine 34, Lowry looked well on his way to another great Open round to follow the 66 he shot late Thursday. However, the nasty 11th hole caused him all kind of problems (and it could have been even worse). After his tee shot next to the train tracks settled up the right side in the tall, wispy fescue, Lowry smother hooked his second into the left gorse. This led to some hollering at a camera operator who apparently affected his play. (Lowry later admitted he was just looking for somebody to blame.)

A few moments after his second shot disappeared into the nasty gorse on the other side of the hole, Lowry dropped a ball in that same spot and belted what was then his fourth shot onto the green. He gave himself a putt at making bogey.

It all should have been so straightforward ... except someone found his original second shot deep in the gorse, and according to the rules, he had to play that ball instead of the provisional he had hit onto the green. The big problem? There was no way to play it. He had to take an unplayable on that original ball and drop what looked to be 30 or 40 yards back on line with the pin. From there, he was hitting his fourth, and he made a double-bogey 6.

If all of that sounds like a mess, well, yeah.

"I did the hard part," Lowry said. "I hit my drive where you could find it, which is obviously a hard thing to do on that hole. I did [have] a nice lie in the 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.

"Then from there, I hit a great provisional. 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. Which I thought, if you declared it lost before it was found, that you didn't have to go and identify it.

"I felt like through that whole process of that 20 minutes, it was whatever it was, of taking the drop, seeing where I could drop, and I felt like I was very calm and composed and really knew that I was doing the right thing. And I felt like [my caddie] did a great job, too, just kind of -- he kept telling me [that] we have loads of time. 'We don't need to rush this. We just need to do the right thing here.'"

It took Lowry approximately 30 minutes to play that 11th hole -- 20 minutes elapsed between his second shot and his third -- and everything seemed heightened in the moment because, you know, he was leading The Open at the time all of it was taking place.

"To be honest, I was happy enough leaving there with a 6. It wasn't a disaster. I was still leading the tournament."

Situations like these can affect players mentally and emotionally even more than it does their scorecards. In Lowry's case, he was able to persevere. He proceeded to hit some filthy flighted irons the whole way home and regained both strokes on two more birdies coming in with an exclamation point at the last.

"Sometimes, you are in a frame of mind that it works better ... you know, you get on with it better than other times," Lowry explained "This week in my head feels like that where I think I'm ready to take what comes, take what's given to me out there. Almost ready for ... anything that's thrown at me. I feel like I'm ready to take it on the chin and move on. I just have to deal with it and try and make the best of it and see where it leads me."

If Lowry's lead holds as the rest of the field plays in windy conditions this afternoon, it will be his second 36-hole lead at a major. The last came at the 2019 Open Championship when he ultimately hoisted the Claret Jug. If he captures another, he will be the first player who already has already won an Open to capture a second jug since Ernie Els in 2012.