This was … a different kind of drop.
[Sorry for that.]
Still, this was rather crappy.
[OK, no more.]
Let us officially begin here. Viktor Hovland was playing his Open Championship first round, and he was rallying, with birdies on 11 and 12 at Royal Liverpool, after bogeys on 8 and 10. On the 602-yard, par-5 15th — the longest par-5 in Open history — Hovland had hit a 352-yard drive down the fairway, and now he was preparing to hit again. From there?
Well, when Hovland was about to take his shot, well, a seagull took a shhhh.
Indeed. Here’s a play-by-play.
Hovland grabbed an iron from his bag. One seagull flew over. Hovland’s caddie, Shay Knight, stepped away. Hovland took two practice swings. He stepped back and talked to Knight. He returned to the ball. He stood over it. He waggled his club.
Another seagull flew past and cried.
Hovland started his backswing.
He stopped. He stepped back. He looked down at his right arm.
“What was that?” Hovland said to Knight.
He walked over to his caddie and held out his arm. He continued.
A bird just shit on Viktor Hovland. You can actually see the flyby. I shit you not. #TheOpenChampionship pic.twitter.com/RvUbhRW96f
— Cork Gaines, Ph.D. (@CorkGaines) July 20, 2023
“I just got s*at on.”
Hovland giggled. He looked up to the sky. Knight wiped his arm off with a golf towel.
“You know that’s good luck, right?” announcer Dan Hicks said on the USA network broadcast.
“That’s what my mom told me the first time it happened to me,” analyst Paul Azinger said.
Perhaps. From there, Hovland walked back to his ball, eventually stopped laughing, went back into his pre-shot routine and hit his second shot just to the right of the green. Notably, as he swung, another bird flew over.
“There’s the culprit,” Azinger said on the broadcast.
“Or a future culprit,” Hicks said.
We’ll end things here with a note on the rules. Yes, there is one for droppings, under Model Local Rule F-12, which is entitled “Animal Dung.” The rule reads as such:
“At the player’s option, dung from [specify dung from which relief would be given, e.g. goose dung, dog dung] may be treated either as: A loose impediment that may be removed under Rule 15.1, or Ground under repair from which relief is allowed under Rule 16.1.
“[If dung is found on the putting green, the player may also use the greens switch/whip located by the putting greens to remove the dung from the line of play. If doing so improves the line of play or other conditions affecting the stroke, there is no penalty under Rule 8.1a.]”
