Matthew Fitzpatrick had to take an alternate route to the 7th green.
NBC Sports
Perhaps what makes the British Open so appealing to us American hackers is seeing the best players in the world run into situations never before seen on the PGA Tour.
This often results in us American hackers never seeing the shots of the best players in the world. Dream of.
On Friday at Royal Troon, Matthew Fitzpatrick, the U.S. Open champion two years ago, hit just such a shot.
After opening with a 70 on Thursday, the Englishman got off to a rough start in his second round, bogeying the par-5 fourth hole and double bogeying the sixth to drop three shots again.
On the 7th hole, Fitzpatrick hit his drive into a left fairway bunker.
In case you haven’t heard, the bunkers at Royal Troon this week were no joke.
“They're dangerous,” R&A CEO Martin Slumbers said of Troon's bunkers Wednesday morning. “They're deep. The bunkers are big and they're designed to avoid being hit in them. We've been watching the bunkers very carefully and I think some players have commented on how we've pushed them up a little bit so they have a chance to get out.”
The slight slope at the edge of the bunker didn't help Fitzpatrick's play on Friday. If things weren't lopsided enough, the 29-year-old had to go sideways.
To make matters worse, Fitzpatrick is right-handed and facing a bunker on the left side of the fairway, so his only option was to pitch into the dense fescue grass. There was only a yard or two of light rough between the bunker edge and the fescue.
It was a masterful shot that went just a little too far, and Fitzpatrick watched in despair as his ball bounced into the long fescue grass.
“This is something you would never see in a normal tournament,” said an announcer for the Open's global broadcast.
Fortunately, Fitzpatrick's ball position was not too bad, and he hit his third shot onto the putting surface and two-putted, losing only one stroke.
The two-time PGA Tour champion and nine-time DP World Tour winner was at 40, but after a disastrous 7 on the 11th hole at Royal Troon, the Railway Hole, he found himself at 6 over for the tournament and well outside the projected cut.
