Open Championship hot mic catches leader Shane Lowry dropping f-bombs on camera operator amidst brutal hole

It’s been quite the month for hot mics, with Tour de France commentators, WNBA journalists, Philadelphia Phillies’ radio announcers, and Chicago Cubs’ studio hosts all caught on unexpectedly-live microphones in one way or another. The latest thing there comes from a double-bogey meltdown from Irish golfer Shane Lowry during the second round of The Open Championship at Scotland’s Royal Troon course Friday.

Lowry’s issues here came on the 11th hole, with him leading the event at that time. He hooked his drive right into the rough, then hit a difficult second shot from there left of the fairway and into the crowd, where it landed in the gorse brush. After that, he dropped some f-bombs on a camera operator, and those were broadcast live on the USA coverage:

Lowry sprays one left and immediately pissed at the cameraman.

Another unreal hot mic 🎤 pic.twitter.com/T6Dx9e44Rk

— Fairway Fitness – Chad Driscoll (@ChadDriscoll_) July 19, 2024

“As I was over the ball, I could just see you putting your f****** camera up. Just get out of the way. Just get back there. F***’s sake!”

But this was just the start of Lowry’s problems on this hole:

To review the at-the-time Open leader’s nearly 30 minute journey playing one hole.
On TV, Shane Lowry teed off 11 at 7:37 a.m. ET
Drives into right rough
Yanks 2nd shot into the gorse (and yells at camera man)
Hits 👍 provisional onto green fairly close for possible bogey putt… pic.twitter.com/CQWmuZYYkU

— Fried Egg Golf (@fried_egg_golf) July 19, 2024

That Fried Egg tweet goes on to note that after Lowry’s provisional shot, his first ball was found in the gorse. He took an unplayable lie penalty and a drop on that, hit a fourth shot short of the green, and then two-putted for a double bogey. However, he managed to record a two-under 69 for the round despite that, making him seven under through the first two rounds and keeping him in the overall tournament lead (albeit with a lot of golfers still to play the course). So it wasn’t a bad day overall for him, despite this verbal component to his No. 11 meltdown going to a TV audience.

This is somewhat different from those aforementioned broadcaster and journalist hot mics this month, as those people were all on broadcasts or in press conferences where they had reason to believe their audio was off. For an athlete in competition, that’s never really the case, and Lowry definitely knew he was being filmed here. But the broadcast feed probably wasn’t expecting quite this rant when they decided to feature live and unbleeped reaction from Lowry here, and that added to quite the lineup of recent athlete f-bombs.

[Chad Driscoll and @NUCLRGOLF on X/Twitter]