Shane Lowry ‘felt like throwing up all over the place' after family hit by sickness bug amid The Open ball controversy
Lowry, 38, was docked two shots on Friday night when TV footage appeared to show his ball move fractionally after a practice swing from the 12th hole rough.
3
He was called in by R&A officials and accepted his painful punishment to avoid being branded a cheat - despite having no idea of the possible breach of the rules until the 15th.
It meant Lowry signed for a round of one-over 72 instead of one-under 70 and started his Saturday round at even par.
The 2019 Open champion at Portrush carded a three-over 74 to take himself out of contention for today's final round.
But then he revealed he had been feeling unwell after a bug hit his wife and daughters.
Lowry said: 'I haven't eaten today yet. I tried to get a protein drink down me after eight holes, and I felt like throwing up all over the place. It's been a tough day and I had a bad finish.
'It was hard to take. Then I woke up at 2.30am with cramps in my stomach. I know we have it in the house.
"Ivy had a couple of days ago. Wendy had it yesterday. Me and Iris have it today. It will be gone by the holidays next week so at least that's a plus.
'Honestly, every bathroom I went in and tried to throw up, I couldn't. It's just such a bad feeling. It's just really bad timing obviously.'
Lowry initially admitted on Friday night he was 'very disappointed' by the harsh ruling but refused to talk more about it yesterday, except to say he had been backed by his fellow pros.
He added: 'Quite supportive, I would say, from the other players. They all feel bad for me that two shots is a lot to give up. I don't really have much else to say.'
Shane Lowry in rules breach controversy at The Open as balls appears to move on practice swing
Playing partner Rahm was one of those to publicly voice his support for Lowry - and called for a change in the strict golf laws and severe penalty.
The Spaniard added: "You're in a no-win situation because if you say I didn't see it, you always run the risk of being called something you don't want to be called.
"If you take it on the safe side, you're taking a two-shot penalty. It's a tough spot to be in. It's tricky.
"Something needs to be changed for sure, I just don't know exactly how they could change it."
3
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
16 minutes ago
- The Independent
Owen Farrell named on bench for Lions' second Test against Wallabies
Owen Farrell has been named on the bench for the British and Irish Lions' attempt at completing a series victory over Australia in Melbourne on Saturday. Four days after captaining the Lions in the midweek victory over the First Nations and Pasifika, Farrell will make his first Test appearance since the 2023 World Cup as fly-half and inside centre cover. Head coach Andy Farrell has made three changes to the starting line-up that won the first Test 27-19, including the removal of Sione Tuipulotu, who is jettisoned from the matchday 23 completely with Bundee Aki taking his place in the number 12 jersey. Joe McCarthy has lost his battle with the foot condition plantar fasciitis so Ollie Chessum is drafted into the second row and there is an adjustment at loosehead prop where Andrew Porter is preferred ahead of Ellis Genge.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Jon Rahm supports Sergio Garcia as future Ryder Cup captain
July 24 - There are still two months until the next Ryder Cup, but Jon Rahm already has thoughts on which golfer should captain Team Europe six years hence. With Ryder Cup officials revealing Tuesday that Spain's Camiral Golf Resort will host the 2031 competition, Rahm believes countryman Sergio Garcia makes sense as Team Europe's captain. The only other time Spain was the site for the Ryder Cup, Spain's Seve Ballesteros captained his side to victory in 1997 at Valderrama. "I think there's something to say about possibly having, obviously, a local captain," Rahm said Wednesday while previewing this week's LIV Golf United Kingdom tournament. "I think it would do wonders for the crowd. If history shows us anything, and it's very hard to compare anybody to Seve, but I've only heard stories about what that Ryder Cup was like. I would say, if possible, I think that's a very obvious good choice to have Sergio be a part of that one." The 45-year-old Garcia ranks among the greatest performers in Ryder Cup annals. In 10 Ryder Cup competitions from 1999 to 2021, he delivered a 25-13-7 record in singles matches. No one has equaled his 28.5 points earned - and he might claim a spot on captain Luke Donald's team for this year's Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in New York. "I think that I can bring things to the team that-to any team that would probably need it," Garcia told reporters after making the cut at last week's Open Championship. "Obviously, at the end of the day, he's going to make whatever he thinks is the best decision for him and his team, at the end of the day. So, we'll see." --Field Level Media
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
What if the England DNA is just never giving up?
In 2014 the FA introduced a set of principles that aimed to define the core characteristics of the England teams and profile the future players who would people them, calling it the 'England DNA'. The decade since then has brought the emergence of a new, technically adept cohort of male and female players. More importantly, both the England men's and women's teams have taken a significant step forward in terms of tournament performance, reaching four finals between them — with a fifth to come on Sunday — of which one was unforgettably won by the Lionesses at Wembley in 2022. These are times that England fans feel grateful to be living through. If you were going to be ultra-critical, though, you'd focus on precisely that idea of England DNA: that shared double-thread which intertwines men's and women's teams and tells us everything we need to know about what an England team looks like, how they play, what their idea of football is. You could probably count on one hand the number of tournament games, even in this era of unprecedented success, where either team has convincingly demonstrated an identity, a way of playing, with the same force or confidence with which Spain — England's biggest rival as the great dual power of the present era — enact their brand of football. Tuesday night's game against Italy was a case in point. There were mitigating circumstances for the Lionesses' rather disjointed and reactive performances against France and Sweden. France was their first tournament game without Millie Bright, Mary Earps and Fran Kirby, with new players bedding in, and Sweden pressed England hard and scored in the second minute: it's a pretty hard ask to serenely impose your style of football in those circumstances. But against Italy, you might have expected more from Sarina Wiegman 's team. They were playing opponents with less quality and far less experience at this level, who for the first half an hour were just trying to feel their way into the occasion. This was exactly the sort of situation where you would expect the superior team, the one playing their fifth straight semi-final, to set the tone and tempo of the match, play their natural game, give a confident exhibition of the way they play. England offered very little of that. Watching them, I had the familiar feeling of finding it hard to discern what they were actually trying to do, the collective joined-up idea of how they intended to create, control and defend. The flip side, of course, is that there was so much to admire in the way England came back. This is a team who never know they're beaten. Once again, in adversity, we saw the best of them. For character, mentality and resilience, England's performance could not be faulted, but it's also worth putting a bit of emphasis on their composure and execution. For the equaliser, Lauren Hemp delivered a superb whipped-in cross to the near post, and Michelle Agyemang finished brilliantly, taking a perfect first touch and then drilling the shot low and hard through the legs of Elena Linari and Laura Giuliani. Given the desperation of the situation, those were moments of exceptional quality. But to be honest, I'm not sure we expected anything less. These Lionesses have thoroughly earned our confidence in their capacity to keep going until the very last second and more often than not, somehow, just find a way. We've seen them do it many times before, after all. Not only could they easily have lost to Sweden in Zurich, they gritted their way past Nigeria and Colombia at the last World Cup, and scored an 84th-minute equaliser against Spain en route to the trophy in 2022. To listen to the players after the Italy game, speaking about the confidence they felt that they could do it again, even as the clock ticked past 95 minutes, was to understand that once a team have done this often enough, that belief, that collective memory, compounds so powerfully that it becomes almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. 'Whilst there are seconds on the clock,' Leah Williamson said, 'it's less 'if' and more 'how'.' I don't think it's mere laziness to draw the comparison with the England men's team: the parallels are obvious. At Euro 2024 in particular, Gareth Southgate's team were often dreadfully inert and lacking in ideas when given the blank slate of a goalless scoreboard and an opponent they were expected to beat: think of the match against Slovenia and the start of the matches against Slovakia and Switzerland. They were not good at dictating games. But give them a desperate situation to react to, and the true quality of the team revealed itself. When Dan Ashworth — then the FA's director of elite development, but now its chief football officer — came up with the England DNA, it was with a vision of formulating a distinct play style in mind. 'As a football nation we have long been characterised by our passion, fighting spirit and effort,' he said. 'Although there are aspects of these characteristics we wish to retain, we do not wish to be solely defined by them.' Bronze, right, and Mead recover in the cryotherapy chamber after a second consecutive game that went to extra time… LIONESSES But where Ashworth had hoped a higher English style would articulate itself, there remains a kind of blank space, one the Lionesses players at this tournament have filled with their evocation of 'proper England': meaning, pretty much, playing with passion, fighting spirit and effort. And yet, there are a few common things which run through the recent exploits of the two national teams. If you had to sum them up, you would probably say: winning duels. Maximising set pieces. Working until the absolute last second and leaving nothing out on the pitch. And pinning the performance on the skill, swagger and determination of individuals rather than an orchestrated tactical masterplan. The question is: is this enough? Does all this constitute an identity in its own right, or is it a poor substitute for one, a scant, bare-minimum ethos which exists in the vacuum where England's answer to Spain's possession-based, positional style ought to be? It's easy to lean towards the latter — and it will be especially so if Sunday brings the spectacle of Spain beating England in a major final for a third year in a row. But when I spoke to the Euro '96 champion Marco Bode last year about Germany's golden era from the 1970s to the mid-Nineties, he advanced the view that the success of those Germany teams was built on work rate, solid temperament and above all, the ability to respond to difficult moments and solve problems. It strikes me that those aren't so different from the virtues which define the England teams now. The reality is there is no English equivalent of Italy's catenaccio, Germany's gegenpressing, Spain's juego de posición, the Cruyff school of the Netherlands. The attempt to define and invent one was nobly intentioned and may bear fruit one day, but right now still feels like a work in progress. And if there's one cardinal lesson which international football teaches us, it's that you can't wish into existence what you don't have; you can only make the best of what you do. England v Spain
