That is the sort of ruling that can change a tournament in an instant, and for Bryson DeChambeau it turned a promising second round into a far less comfortable reality. He had finished with birdie-birdie and signed for a four-under 66, only for officials to review the fifth hole and hand down a two-shot penalty that dragged him back to a two-under 68.
The result mattered immediately. DeChambeau had arrived at Royal Birkdale looking to avoid missing every major cut, and for a while his scorecard at least suggested he was building something useful. Instead, the ruling left him on five under rather than seven under, and three shots behind the halfway leader heading into the weekend. In a major, that is not a minor correction. That is a meaningful swing in position, pressure and outlook.
What happened at the fifth hole?
According to R&A chief referee Grant Moir, DeChambeau was penalised two strokes for inadvertently improving the area of his intended backswing on the fifth hole when he was playing his second shot. Moir explained that Rule 8.1 restricts what a player may do to improve any of the protected conditions affecting the stroke, including the area of the player’s intended swing, and that an improvement means altering one or more of those conditions so the player gains a potential advantage for the stroke.
The key detail here is that the action was accidental. That does not matter under the rule. Moir made that plain, and it is precisely why these cases can feel so brutal to players: intent is not the issue, consequence is. DeChambeau even returned to the fifth hole with officials after the round to protest the ruling, but the penalty stood.
A leaderboard shift with real consequences
The timing made the whole thing even more awkward. The ruling was not officially confirmed until more than 70 minutes after DeChambeau had walked off the 18th hole, which only stretched out the uncertainty. He had looked to have bought himself some breathing room with that closing birdie-birdie finish, but the penalty wiped away the gain and then some.
And while DeChambeau was trying to navigate that mess, Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns were making the day look absurdly simple. Herbert shot an eight-under 62 at Royal Birkdale, and Burns matched it, with both men equalling the lowest round in men’s major history. That is the kind of scoring that can make the chasing pack feel irrelevant if you are not careful, and DeChambeau’s revised position now leaves him trying to keep pace rather than dictate terms.
That is the harsh truth of The Open. One player can be dealing with a rules headache, while two others are posting 62s and rewriting the day around them. DeChambeau is still in the tournament, of course, but the penalty has made the route forward harder. What looked like a solid afternoon became a reminder that major championships are often decided by the smallest details — and sometimes by the most annoying ones.
