TROON, Scotland — Shane Lowry was coasting through the Open Championship playing some great, boring golf. Lowry ranked fifth in Greens in Regulation and seventh in Fairways Hit through his first 27 holes, and led the field by two shots.

Then the 2019 Open champion arrived at Royal Troon’s par-4 11th hole. With railway tracks flanking the right side and gorse bushes on the left, it’s not just one of the hardest holes on the golf course, but in all of major championship golf.

It wasn’t the drive which undid Lowry on this hole, though. His drive found the rough on the right side of the hole, and left him 176 yards from the green.

That’s when things went wrong. An overzealous cameraman distracted Lowry in the final moments before he hit his ball. The ball squirted directly left, and flew directly into the gorse bushes.

Annoyed, Lowry took a deep breath, closed his eyes, then dropped a provisional ball in the event he couldn’t find his first shot. He hit it well: That shot finished about 10 feet away.

Lowry may have preferred to play that ball and hopefully salvaged a bogey. Under the rules of golf, he would’ve been allowed to had he not found his first ball, but he did. You can spot it here.

That left Lowry with three options:

1. Attempt to play his ball from the gorse bush
2. Take two club-lengths of relief from the spot of his ball
3. Re-hit from his previous position

After some deliberation, Lowry decided on option two. His relief got him to a reasonable path of trampled rough.

From there, Lowry pitched his ball 70 yards to the front of the green, then two-putted for a double bogey.

It was a double bogey in all, which dropped him back into a tie for the lead, which he followed with three consecutive pars.

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com