Whether he won or tied for 35th, Shane Lowry's return to Royal Portrush six years after his Open championship win promised to be a special one. It has been anything but for the Irishman this week.

PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — Twenty minutes, dissecting a tenth-of-a-second sequence, to determine if a ball had shifted two dimples. The verdict would decide not just a two-stroke penalty but whether ...