Shane Lowry embarrasses himself with comments about setup at 152nd Open

More than any other tournament on the golfing calendar, the Open Championship is about surviving the elements. The 152nd Open at Royal Troon lived up to that reputation in full force as heavy winds battered the course all four days with rain being added to the mix on Saturday. Players hitting into the wind were using long irons from distances that would ordinarily call for wedges, and drives playing downwind received close to 100 yards of help.

Inevitably, golfers teeing off at different times faced drastically different conditions during portions of The Open as wind speed and direction shifted over the course of a day. The most drastic illustration of this imbalance was seen during the third round; players teeing off in the morning experienced far calmer conditions, and a number of low rounds were posted before the bulk of the wild weather arrived. A few examples include a 65 from Sam Burns, a 65 from Thriston Lawrence, and a 66 from Russell Henley.

Scores like this were nowhere to be found in the afternoon rounds as winds whipped up to 20 mph and rain relentlessly pelted the property for hours on end.

Troon's claws came out and the course played as intended - score on the front nine and hold on for dear life on the back. Players in the final groups simply could not reach the greens in two shots on the par fours: The 11th, 13th, and 15th saw players hitting three-wood and sometimes even driver from 240+ yards on their second shots and still coming up short. Shane Lowry and Dan Brown both hit driver on the 238-yard par-three 17th, a sight that is unheard of in professional golf.

It was these conditions that drove Shane Lowry to voice negative feedback about Troon's setup after carding a third-round 77. The Mirror provided this quote from the Irishman following his round:

"Look, I don't really know what to say. It was a grind. It wasn't much fun. Driver, driver into 15. 16 playing ridiculously long. Driver into 17. Then you're standing on the 18th tee wondering if you can actually hit the fairway, if you can reach the fairway, and it's 230-yards to the fairway. Bear in mind my driver pitched about 220-yards on the 17th hole. So, yeah, it's not much fun out there. It's obviously very difficult. But you'd have to question why there wasn't a couple of tees put forward today, to be honest. I think 15 and 17 - like 15 is 500-yards playing into that wind."

- Shane Lowry

Let's pause and unpack these comments. First of all (and to state the obvious), nobody has any control over the tumultuous Scottish weather conditions. Given a choice, every individual involved in the Open Championship - players, caddies, grounds crew, the R&A - would opt for consistent weather patterns from the first tee time to the last. Unfortunately, this is virtually never seen on this part of the globe.

Despite the brutally challenging environment faced by the players in the late tee times, there were still a few that managed to turn in quality rounds. Both Xander Schauffele and Billy Horschel recorded outstanding 69's in the gale. Justin Rose finished within one of the lead after shooting a solid 73, and World-No. 1 Scottie Scheffler turned in an even-par 71 which included a remarkable birdie on the monstrous par-three 17th after hitting a three wood to tap-in range, arguably the best shot of the entire tournament.

There is no reason why Shane Lowry couldn't have put a 72 or 73 on the board rather than his 77.

Had he done so, he would have taken a solo lead into the final round after being two clear of second place and five clear of fourth place after 36 holes.

Then there is the sometimes problematic expectation of par. Scores are displayed in terms of where a player stands in relation to par. This method is sensible for many reasons, particularly because it is the easiest way for both players and fans to make sense of how well a golfer is playing. On occasion, however, this method can become unproductive because it can lead to a belief that a hole is too difficult or unfair if it is extremely difficult to make par.

The golfers are competing against fellow golfers, not against the arbitrary notion of par: Success is determined by completing four rounds of golf in fewer strokes than the competitors.

Par is entirely meaningless - it is a construct meant to create a reasonable expectation that we can use to easily understand a golfer's quality of play.

So the fact that many of the par threes and fours at Troon were so difficult on Saturday is irrelevant because the objective is not to par these holes, it is simply to be better than opponents.

As an example, let's create a scenario in which all the par fours on Royal Troon's back nine were changed to par fives for Saturday. Obviously, this is entirely unrealistic, but if you will forgive this egregious fabrication, the exercise will prove useful.

If all the par fours on the back nine were changed to par fives, every aspect of the narrative would become flipped.

The inward nine would be seen as a plethora of birdie opportunities where golfers can make up ground. Every single hole on the back nine would have had an under-par scoring average. What was one of the most brutally difficult finishes in all of golf would have been considered one of the easiest. Xander Schauffele and Billy Horschel's back nine scores would have been five-under 36 rather than one-over 36, and Shane Lowry's third-round tally would not have been a six-over 77 but rather an even-par 77.

I am certain that if this were the case, Lowry's comments after the round would have been about how he played sloppy and failed to take advantage of the numerous scoring opportunities rather than the over-the-top difficult setup of the golf course.

In situations like this, we must recalibrate our expectations so that we think of par as a very difficult, and therefore very good, score. The players that were most successful in doing this survived Saturday. Those that remained stuck in their usual expectations of par did not.

Furthermore, regardless of anyone's feelings about the back nine, Lowry completely failed to take advantage of an outward nine that was there for the taking. The Irishman opened with 37 on Saturday, recording just one birdie. This pales in comparison to peers like Schauffele and Horschel who shot 33 and 32, respectively.

It can easily be argued that Lowry's front nine performance was more damaging than his back nine score.

This part of his round cannot be attributed to any flaws in golf course setup.

Irrespective of these thoughts, Lowry's comments simply do not make sense. Let's consider a scenario in which the R&A had done as the former Open Champion wished and shortened the home holes in preparation for the elements. This would have done exactly nothing to mitigate the advantage held by players in the early tee times.

No matter how far up the tees were moved on holes 15 and 17, they still would have been drastically easier for the morning wave when conditions were calm. Scores would have been considerably lower for all golfers throughout the day, not just the late ones. Regardless of any well-intended adjustments, later tee times were always going to experience a far bigger struggle.

Shane Lowry was not alone with these feelings and is certainly not the first player to express them. Tyrrell Hatton and Dan Brown both echoed his sentiments. There have been numerous instances when golfers expressed discontent with what they perceived to be overly difficult setups, most commonly at the U.S. Open, which is best known for tormenting its participants.

Clearly, those that express these frustrations have not expended much energy thinking intelligently about them. More often than not, comments like Lowry's are not truly about flaws in a golf course; rather, they are symptoms of misdirected frustration due to consequences for poor ball-striking and lackluster shot-making.

It is not surprising that these individuals did not find themselves in a position to win on Sunday at the 152nd Open Championship.