The Open 2016: Sky Sports camera catches fire above golfers on the driving range as Royal Troon heats up

Things are heating up at Royal Troon

Jack de Menezes
Friday 15 July 2016 16:22 BST
Comments
The Sky Sports cable camera catches fire above the Royal Troon Golf Course during The Open
The Sky Sports cable camera catches fire above the Royal Troon Golf Course during The Open (Sky Sports)

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Sky Sports have made it no secret that they’ve got exclusively live coverage of The Open for the first time. Sky Sports The Open has been created as a new channel, a 15-man-and-woman team at Royal Troon and coverage like you’ve never seen before are all part of what Sky are offering this weekend.

It’s all been a relative success too, although given the rain and high winds that have battered Troon on Friday, the last thing anyone will have expected was a fire.

That’s exactly what happened though as the overhead camera suddenly caught alight in what was a pretty catastrophic malfunction. While the remaining 154 players made their way around the prestigious Ayrshire course, the camera – which runs over the practice range on two lengths of cable – was burning brightly in the grey sky.

The camera wasn’t the only thing to be running red hot this week at Troon, as Phil Mickelson added to his record-equalling opening round of 63 with a hard-fought 69 to finish the day on two-under and lead the championship on -10.

Behind him, the chasing pack was beginning to find its feet, with Henrik Stenson carding a brilliant 65 in terrible conditions to head into the weekend on -9, just one shot off the lead.

Behind Stenson, both Soren Kjeldson and Keegan Bradley were a further two shots off, while the highest-placed Briton in Andrew Johnston recorded a second consecutive round of 69 to tie for eighth on -4.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in