Shane Lowry was upset with ESPN reporter during PGA Championship

Shane Lowry was visibly frustrated during Friday’s second round of the PGA Championship. At least part of that frustration was directed at an on-course reporter from ESPN.

The rules allow for free relief if a player ends up in his own pitch mark but not anyone else’s. When Lowry was talking to a rules official about whether he was entitled to relief, an ESPN reporter said the pitch mark was not Lowry’s. That unprompted input frustrated the golfer.

“It was just that the ESPN guy was a bit too in there involved when he wasn’t asked to be and that’s what annoyed me a lot,” Lowry said after the round, per Brian Keogh, the Irish Independent. “I was just asking the referee and the ESPN guy comes straight over and he’s like, ‘That’s not your pitch mark.’ And I’m like, ‘That’s not for you to talk about. That’s for me to call a rules official and decide what happens.’ I just said, the rules official, ‘What happens to the guy at 7:10 who’s not on ESPN Live? I guarantee you he’s down there arguing that’s his pitch mark. I don’t want a drop because it’s not my pitch mark. But I’m just saying.’ And it goes back to (the fact that) I had a lot of mud balls again today.”

A visibly frustrated Lowry hit his next shot into the bunker.

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He went on to bogey the hole and missed the cut by a shot.

Lowry clarified that he didn’t think he was entitled to relief but felt the reporter’s input created a potential inequity.

“It looks like a fresh pitch mark that I was in, but it also looked like there’s a fresh one beside it,” Lowry added. “So look, I wasn’t arguing that it was my pitch mark. I was trying to be 100% sure. Because imagine if I had to come in and all of a sudden somebody told me that was your pitch mark and there’s this one guy whose producers tell him it isn’t?”