Rickie Fowler Butchers Third Hole At Whistling Straits Thursday

Whistling Straits has more than 1,000 bunkers, and Rickie Fowler learned about one of them the hard way today.

Fowler's opening round at the PGA Championship was off to a good start (3-under through 11 holes), then disaster struck on his 12th hole (the 181-yard, par-3 third).

Fowler found a bunker left of the green with his tee shot, and PGA Tour's Shot Tracker doesn’t quite show the entire debacle, but it appears Rickie needed four more shots to escape the bunker and find the green. His second, third, fourth and fifth shots traveled a grand total of about 55 feet.

Here’s what it looked like. 

Rickie in some serious trouble on 3. He's blocked from view, but looks like this might he his 4th try out of bunker.

— Doug Ferguson (@dougferguson405) August 13, 2015

How hard are the bunkers at Whistling Straits? Rickie Fowler took 4 shots to get out of one on the 3rd. Made quad. pic.twitter.com/ev9QYudXw1

— The European Tour (@EuropeanTour) August 13, 2015

Rickie would go on to make a quadruple-bogey seven and drop back to one-over par. He birdied the following hole and the par-4 sixth, but two bogeys coming in left him at one-over 73.

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