A furious Shane Lowry made his feelings about Quail Hollow known in emphatic fashion on day two of the 107th US PGA Championship, with the Irishman and Tyrrell Hatton both likely to face fines for foul-mouthed outbursts.
Lowry’s tee shot on the eighth hole pitched in the fairway and bounced sideways into a pitch mark left by another player.
That meant the former Open champion was not allowed relief for an embedded ball and, after confirming the situation with a rules official, Lowry could only hit his second shot into a greenside bunker.
Lowry responded by slamming his club into the turf and exclaiming loudly, “f*** this place” before going on to make a bogey five and flipping his middle finger at the hole as he tapped in.
The dropped shot contributed to a second round of 71 and meant Lowry missed the cut by a single shot on two over par.
Hatton had a similarly turbulent relationship with the course, with the Englishman within a shot of the lead before a triple bogey and lashing out as a response.
He was heard swearing at his own driver after pulling his tee shot on the difficult par-four 18th into the creek which runs the length of the 18th hole.
Following a penalty drop, Hatton scored a seven before covering the front nine in 36 to complete a 73, which left him one under par.
“It wasn’t my finest moment on the course but I mean, yeah, running hot in the moment I’m pretty good at sometimes saying the wrong thing.
“So yeah, I’ll leave it at that.”
Hatton’s temper has frayed previously on the course: the world No. 20 snapped a club and complained about the conditions during the DP World Tour Championship in November.
Mud balls have been the story of the PGA Championship so far and the lack of preferred lies frustrated Lowry, who said of the eighth hole: “You hit a lovely tee shot, you’re not expecting that.
“I was obviously very annoyed with that because I felt like I had quite a bit of momentum going in the round and standing there with 40 or 50 yards to the pin off the fairway it’s an easy pitch shot for me and I walk away making bogey.
“You don’t get many chances and I feel like the eighth hole is one, and when you don’t take advantage of a good tee shot or you get a bit of a break like that it’s not ideal is it?”
Lowry also criticised an on-course reporter for weighing in, adding: “The ESPN guy was a bit too involved when he wasn’t asked to be and that’s what annoyed me a lot.
“He came straight over and said ‘That’s not your pitch mark’, and that’s not for you to talk about, it’s for me to call a rules official and decide what happens.
“I wasn’t arguing that it was my pitch mark, I was trying to be 100 per cent sure because imagine if I come in [after the round] and all of a sudden somebody told me that was my pitch mark.
“They told Brooks [Koepka] his ball was okay yesterday and it was on the driving range so you need to be careful about what you’re doing because there’s so much at stake.”
Additional reporting by PA
