GULLANE, Scotland — Bringing what already had been a testy, frustrating British Open week for a number of players to a the boil yesterday was a sudden slow-play crackdown by the Royal & Ancient, the Open’s governing body, at Muirfield.
A number of players were put on the clock, and young Japanese star-in-the-making Hideki Matsuyama, who has been in contention all week, was penalized one stroke for slow play.
Matsuyama’s group was put on the clock on the 15th hole because they were 15 minutes over the scheduled time and were out of position with the group ahead of them.
His first bad time was recorded on his first putt on the 15th at 1 minute, 12 seconds. His second bad time was on his second shot to the 17th hole, which was 2 minutes, 12 seconds. That resulted in the one-shot penalty applied to his score on No. 16, which became a bogey 6.
Matsuyama, who was 3-under par for his round through 11 holes and 1-under for the tournament, finished with a 3-over-par 72 and is 3-over for the tournament. He bogeyed the 18th hole after being penalized and was 4-over par on his final seven holes.
“Under the situation I think it’s tragic, and I think the R&A should use better judgment in the penalizing of it,’’ Matsuyama’s playing partner Johnson Wagner said. “I’m a fast player. I don’t like slow play either. But given his position in the tournament, and given the shot he was facing on 17 — laying it up out of the fescue over gorse and pot bunkers — I don’t think he took too long.“I pleaded in the scoring areas for five minutes. It infuriated me that he got a penalty. If they tried to penalize me I would have gone ballistic. So I tried to represent Hideki as good as I could and couldn’t get it changed.’’
David Rickman, the R&A director of rules, said, “We’re not in the business of unsettling players,’’ but stood by the ruling, which was made by David Probyn, a tournament director on the European Tour.
Matsuyama was not the only player dogged by tournament officials for slow play. Sergio Garcia, Padraig Harrington, Graeme McDowell and Greg Bourdy were put on the clock as well, though none were penalized.
“You don’t want to feel like you’re running around the course,’’ an irritated McDowell said after his round. “It unsettles you. It takes only one bad shot to get out of position. I thought they were getting a little hard-core with the watch out there. Have a little common sense, boys.’’
* Miguel Angel Jimenez, the 49-year-old, 36-hole leader, faded from contention with a 77, turning his one-shot lead into a six-shot deficit at 3-over.
Jimenez bogeyed four of the first eight holes and, on the back nine, he bogeyed the 14th, took a double-bogey at the 16th when he needed two swings to escape a greenside pot bunker, and lipped-out a putt on 17 for another bogey.
* Ernie Els, the defending champion and the last player to win at Muirfield, refused to count himself out entering today’s final round despite being 5-over par. Els came back from six strokes to overtake Adam Scott last year at Lytham.
“If I’m within six or seven, you never know,’’ said Els, who is seven back. “It happened last year. I’m not saying it’s going to happen every year, but anything can happen in the Open.’’
Els said this has been a difficult week for him because he believes he has not gotten any breaks.
“It’s tough when you’ve won and you’ve had a lot of things going your way and then the next year you don’t get the bounces,’’ he said.
* After two days of players’ bellyaching about the difficulty of the course set-up, the R&A seemingly softened the place yesterday, watering some fairways and greens to make it more scoreable.
“It was going to get unplayable if they didn’t do anything about it,’’ Richard Sterne said. “I’m glad they did, otherwise I think it would have turned into a real disaster, to be honest.’’
Sterne said the 15th green, which was “a bit of a joke’’ on Friday, was “fine’’ yesterday.
Still, many players are coming away from Muirfield speaking about it as if it’s the toughest test they’ve ever faced.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,’’ Keegan Bradley said. “This is the hardest. The U.S. Open is hard because the rough is so high. Here, it’s out in front of you and it’s still very difficult.’’