WATCH: Lefty goes righty for epic Open Championship par
Faced with an awkward lie atop a bunker at the Open Championship, southpaw Robert MacIntyre went righty on his way to an epic par.
Stuart Kerr/R&A/R&A via Getty Images
Robert MacIntyre’s tee shot on the 18th hole Saturday at the Open Championship would have been just fine if it wasn’t for one crucial fact: last week’s Scottish Open winner is a southpaw.
As he came to the close of his third round at Royal Troon, he was one over for the day and six over for the championship, 13 shots behind Shane Lowry, who was still more than an hour from treeing off.
With not much to lose, MacIntyre pulled driver on the par-4 that brought two left fairway pot bunkers into play. Troon’s 18th had been one of the easiest all week, but a switch in the wind direction, now into the breeze, meant it was the 7th-hardest on the course early Saturday.
MacIntyre gave the big stick a lash and then watched, helplessly, as his fade became more of cut and drifted closer and closer to those two bunkers. The ball landed in-between the sand traps, kicked left and stopped in the rough, mere inches from the sand, perched high above it.
The lie would have been no problem for a right-hander. But MacIntyre isn’t so fortunate.
“As a left-hander, where’s he going to stand?” asked NBC announcer Terry Gannon.
Analyst Paul McGinley knew the answer.
“I don’t think he can stand left-handed,” McGinley said. “He’s going to turn the club around and just chip it forward.”
By the time MacIntyre got to his ball, that’s exactly what he was examining.
“It’s just one of those bad breaks you get in links golf,” McGinley said.
First, he had a hybrid in his hands, looking for a stance somewhere behind the ball. But that would have ended up with him lining up way to the right. Even going as far as to stand in the bunker and see what kind of baseball swing he could make.
Then he grabbed an iron and flipped it upside down to start rehearsing a right-handed swing. And that’s what he did.
“Missed the bunker and then you get up there and you’ve got no shot,” MacIntyre said afterward. “I couldn’t even stand in the bunker and hit it. I just thought, why not hit it right-handed?”
Then, in something that almost never happens in golf, MacIntyre’s bad break was rewarded with a good break. He took nearly a full swing with what looked like a short iron and caught it clean, but the ball took off right.
“FORE!” he shouted as his ball headed for the grandstands.
But the ball went so far right that it missed the long fescue grass, kicked off the grandstands and settled in some light rough. He had a clear shot to the flag with plenty of green to work with from 70 yards.
“Yeah, I got a good bit of luck,” he admitted later. “The only place I couldn’t go was left, so I kind of aimed at the right TV tower and just put a swing on it. As long as I hit the club face it was going to be alright.”
He pitched his ball to 2 feet, 7 inches. A routine 4.
At his post-round press conference, MacIntyre was asked when the last time he played a right-handed shot was.
McGinley suspected MacIntyre had played the traditional Scottish ball and stick game of shinty, where players swing the stick from both sides.
But MacIntyre suspected this attempt may have been a first.
“I would have done one probably recently, but full swipe at it? I’ve not done one, I don’t think, in my life,” he said.
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