Tommy Fleetwood’s quest to win The Open at Royal Portrush hasn’t got off to the best start and the Englishman is not too happy with an apparent rule change.
Fleetwood battled his way around in difficult conditions and ended up at two over par for the round.
With the field already bunching, Fleetwood is still just six back of the leaders and with a solid second round, he should find himself into the weekend at the very least.
Nevertheless, Fleetwood will need to play better and part of that better play will have to be avoiding the bunkers.
Fleetwood found more than his fair share of sand around Portrush but while his own shots were errant at times, he was far from happy with the lack of care being taken of the bunkers.
Tommy Fleetwood unhappy with bunker ruling at The Open
Every player is going to find the traps at Royal Portrush. The course is set up to ensure players end up in trouble.
However, after Fleetwood found trouble as he looked to close out his round well, he found himself in a horrible lie in the fairway bunker.
Needless to say, Fleetwood wasn’t happy and speaking to the media afterwards, he lamented the lack of effort.
“Yeah, it wasn’t a great — yeah, it wasn’t a great rake job. I probably could have managed it — first thing is I was not very happy to be in there. That was the first thing, so that’s my fault. But yeah, it wasn’t — like I say, when things are going — things weren’t going well. It was like in somebody’s hitting mark that hadn’t really been raked great.
“I probably could have managed it better. I still felt like I could hit — I tried to hit what I thought was the right shot, like kind of duff something because I knew I couldn’t get any sort of strike perched on the ball so I tried to duff it, but then you’ve got to get the height as well. So that was a bit harsh,” Fleetwood commented.
Asked specifically on a suggestion that the caddies hadn’t been given the proper messaging regarding the apparent change in bunker raking rules, Fleetwood admitted to it seeming a bit off.
“Yeah, I don’t remember when it changed actually. Was it really? They’ve always had bunker rakers until this week? I thought so. I thought that was odd. I mean, still, you just rake the bunkers, right? It’s part of the game,” Fleetwood continued.
“You don’t know what’s gone on before. I’m not going to hold it against anyone too much. You don’t know what was going on, you don’t know what was happening in that moment. I’m not going to get angry about anyone where you don’t know what’s happening, but it wasn’t great, and yeah, bunker rakers would have been nice.”
The bunkers must be bad if Tommy Fleetwood is complaining
Tommy Fleetwood is one of golf’s good guys. He rarely complains, loves what he does and comes across as grateful to be able to make a living from golf.
However, if the Englishman is having a bit of a complain, then you know things aren’t great at Portrush.
Quite what has happened and why this apparent change has been brought in is a bit of a mystery.
As the week progresses, one can only imagine the bunkers will get worse and if that ends up costing someone as they go down the stretch on Sunday, then there could be even bigger complaints.
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