At the end of his press conference on Friday, after answering questions about PGA Tour status and making cuts and adding ball speed, Danny Lee had a message of his own.
“Can I add something?”
Lee wanted to make sure that everyone knew: He didn’t do it on purpose. During Thursday’s opening round at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, TV cameras were trained on Scott Gutschewski putting on No. 10 when a ball bounded into the picture and settling on the far end of the green. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the ball actually made contact with Gutschewski or not — if he was a punt returner in the NFL, they would have gone to video review — but it was a close call. The ball had come off the driver of Danny Lee, who was hitting a provisional tee shot over the trees on the drivable hole.
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“I’ve been getting a lot of DMs about No. 10,” Lee said after Friday’s round, a second consecutive 67. “I mean, hitting up on the green. I mean, first of all, I apologized to everybody and I apologized to Scott. I watched it on TV too, how close it almost hit him. I mean, Jesus, thank God it didn’t hit him.”
Lee explained that he had no idea the group was on the green as he reached the hole. Nobody else seemed to realize that he was going for the green.
“But at the time when we showed up on the 10th tee, they weren’t even on the fairway. I gave another five to seven minutes and then I hit my first one way right, hit the cart path, went 90 yards right. So even then no one said, “They’re still on the green, you should wait,” or anything like that.
“So I obviously hit my provisional, hit a better line, better shot, landed on the green and some of the people were like, ‘What are you doing? Like did you not know they were on the green?’
“But I didn’t, I honestly didn’t. I wasn’t trying to kill anybody out there, that’s not my intention. I’m just trying to come out here like rest of other players, just play my best golf possible. That was my intention. I apologized to everybody. I just want to make sure that I apologize to everybody. I mean, there’s no excuse for it, it’s my fault hitting up there, but I just want to clarify things.”
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The near-miss didn’t seem to bother either Lee or Gutschewski. In fact, Lee didn’t even play the ball in real time — he actually found his first and made bogey from there en route to an opening 67 that left him T4. On Friday he was stalled out at one over par through 13 holes but then rallied for a wild finish, holing out for eagle at No. 5 and then finishing birdie-birdie-birdie-par.
