‘Oh sh*t!’: Phil Mickelson rockets one out-of-bounds

One of the quirks at Royal Liverpool is an internal out of bounds area that lines two holes, one of which is the 18th. It houses a tent area and creates another obstacle for players to deal with and avoid. It’s pretty rare to have OB at a major championship that’s not the actual property line, but these white stakes come pretty close to the fairway on those two holes.

On No. 18, it adds a challenge and punishes anything hit too far right. Phil Mickelson went too far right and knew it immediately.

Players say a lot of things after they hit poor shots. They talk to the ball, tell it to get down or get up, ask for wind, hope for a bounce and a plethora of other things. It’s not very often a player realizes a shot is so poor so quickly that he blurts out “oh, shit” seconds after contact.

To make the situation worse, Mickelson didn’t think his ball went out of bounds. He said no one signaled that it was out of bounds, so he walked all the way up the fairway thinking he’d have a shot only to find this when he got there:

Mickelson was forced to walk back down the fairway and hit another provisional shot from the original spot. To his credit, he still managed to make a bogey, an oh-shit bogey.