'That's not for you to talk about...' Shane Lowry fuming with 'ESPN guy' over PGA rules incident

Shane Lowry believes an ESPN reporter got "too involved" in his rules situation during the second round of the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club, following an interview with the Irish Independent. 

Lowry, 38, split the middle of the fairway on the short par-4 8th.

But when he got up to his ball he saw it had settled in a pitch mark. 

The 2019 Open champion called over a rules official to deliberate the situation. 

While he was speaking the rules official, an on-course ESPN reporter was also on the scene.

Lowry claims he was informed by the reporter that his ball had fallen into a fellow competitor's pitch mark.

But the reporter's involvement in the situation did not sit well with Lowry.

The rules official deemed Lowry's ball was not embedded and that he was not going to be given free relief. 

A hot-headed Lowry proceeded to chunk his ball 10 yards in front of him.

He then reacted angrily by thumping the turf before going on to make a bogey-five. 

It proved costly in the grand scheme of things too, as Lowry carded a 71 to miss the cut by one shot on 2-over par. 

Lowry spoke about why he was so frustrated after the round. 

"It was just that the ESPN guy was a bit too in there involved when he wasn't asked to be and that's what annoyed me a lot," Lowry told the Irish Independent. 

"I was just asking the referee and the ESPN guy comes straight over and he's like, ‘That’s not your pitch mark’. And I'm like, ‘That's not for you to talk about'. That's for me to call a rules official and decide what happens…

"I just said, the rules official, what happens to the guy at 7:10 who's not on ESPN Live? I guarantee you he's down there arguing that’s his pitch mark.”

Lowry added: "It looked like a fresh pitch mark that I was in, but it also looked like there's a fresh one beside it.

"So look, I wasn't arguing that it was my pitch mark. I was trying to be 100% sure. because imagine if I had to come in and all of a sudden somebody told me that was your pitch mark and there's this one guy whose producers tell him it isn’t?…

"So you need to be just careful about what you're doing, because there's so much at stake."

Lowry last week stormed out of Philadelphia Cricket Club and declined all interviews with the media after being narrowly denied the Truist Championship by his European Ryder Cup teammate Sepp Straka. 

A number of PGA Tour fans ripped into the Irishman after footage emerged of him shunning a little girl during the final round.

Lowry's tantrum was not the only one in the second round of the PGA.

LIV Golf star and Lowry's European Ryder Cup teammate Tyrrell Hatton also threw one.

Hatton admitted it was not his finest moment after the round.