You absolutely never know what the Open Championship is going to give you.
We found this lesson out once again during Saturday’s round at Royal Portrush. Rory McIlroy, 6-under at the time, was doing his best to chase down Scottie Scheffler and Matt Fitzpatrick and hit his approach shot on number 11. It was then that things got wild.
Watch Rory’s shot. You are not seeing things. As his ball takes flight, another emerges from the ground and rises into the air. For real.
Clearly a ball happened to be plugged underneath where Rory hit his shot and the shot he created forced it to rise. In all of your time watching golf though… have you ever seen this?
The sheer odds of this happening are insane if we really think about them. Rory’s ball had to land (almost) exactly where another one did at some point in time and hid underneath the ground. He then had to hit a powerful enough shot (normal for him) to cause what we saw.
Unfortunately the situation caused Rory’s approach to fall short and he wound up bogeying the hole. Amazingly, poetically, he responded immediately by making an eagle on the 12th to ignite the Irish crowd and put himself in the mix as the weekend continues to work.
