An eagle from a bunker and a roar for Rory create a defining moment at British Open

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – The drive behaved properly along its 334-yard trip until the ancient course decided it’d had just about enough of getting bludgeoned by absurdly good players and ultramodern equipment. It got all sore. It let the thing roll a bit and then used one of its 112 bunkers to swallow it.

That gnarly little bunker, to the front right of the green at No. 10, the par-4 titled “Bobby Jones,” became the first one Rory McIlroy had visited in his 46 holes to that point all week. The ball went on in and heckled from the middle of the trap, not such a bad lie given some of the harrowing bunker walls around here.

At that moment, nobody much figured there would come the shot people might end up remembering from this exalted 150th British Open at the Old Course. At that moment, nobody figured there would come a roar that didn’t blare across Scotland and across the Irish Sea to Northern Ireland, but maybe got close. At that moment, Scottie Scheffler and Dustin Johnson waited at the No. 11 tee nearby. “We saw his ball roll into the bunker,” said Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 player, “so we were wondering what part of the bunker it ended up in.”

It was just past 6 p.m. Saturday, and the leader board quaked with highbrow talent and highfalutin rankings. Top-10 player Viktor Hovland led the field at 14 under par after making a bushel of birdies right in front of McIlroy, his playing partner. McIlroy stood at 13 under, as would morning leader Cameron Smith, who birdied No. 9 just behind. McIlroy went on down there in the little hazard, 27 yards from the cup, to attempt another of the many recoveries in a golfer’s life.

So he hit the shot. It made a nice pretty arc. It smacked down on the green. It took a second bounce. It took maybe a third little stutter-bounce. It rolled some. It slowed down. It plunked into the cup for eagle.

“I couldn’t really see,” Scheffler said. “The cameras were in the way.

“It was really loud there for a minute or so, which was pretty funny.”

Immediately McIlroy, his day altered, his score brought to 15 under and first place up from third and three shots back at the beginning, had to remember his manners as he does pretty much always.

“I tried not to be too animated,” he said, “because D.J. and Scottie were trying to hit their tee shots on 11. I didn’t want to rile the crowd up too much because they obviously wanted to hit their tee shots.”

He popped up from the sand to the earth’s surface in his green shirt and shared a high handshake with caddie Harry Diamond, then waved to a crowd that wouldn’t have minded if he had initiated a protracted line dance. He tried to keep it just subdued enough to offset his face, which could not contain rapture.

“Yeah, that hole was sort of perched up on a little crown there,” McIrroy said. “And I was just trying to get it somewhat close. Anything inside 10 feet I felt was going to be a really good shot. It just came out perfectly. I think it was the first bunker I put in this week. And it was a nice result.” He called it “skill to get it somewhere close, but it was luck that it went in the hole.”

It turned things because he had been watching Hovland, the 24-year-old Norwegian wonder, make a 38-foot birdie on No. 3, a 42-foot birdie on No. 4, a 2-foot birdie after driving the green in two on par-5 No. 5, and a 19-foot birdie on No. 6. At such moments must playing partners resist the urge to try keeping up or to just go ahead and flee the course.

“Watching Viktor hole a couple of long ones early on,” McIlroy said while recapping. “But stayed really patient … And I feel like my patience was rewarded around the turn with a couple of birdies and that hole-out on 10.”

Hovland, who still had a hole to finish, joined in the congratulations. “Rory is a good guy,” he would say later, “so I don’t mind saying, ‘Good shot,’ to him. I mean, like the bunker shot he hit on No. 10, like, disregarding the situation you’re in, that’s just a filthy bunker shot. So you just kind of have to go, ‘Hey, that was a sick shot.’ Yeah, I mean, it’s just part of the game.”

Hovland then sank a 14-foot birdie putt, which couldn’t have been easy even if only he and maybe next of kin might remember.