From Richard Winton from BBC.com

Shaun Norris stepped on to the fourth tee at Royal Portrush one over for The Open. A run at the leaderboard was still within his sights.

Twenty minutes later, the South African’s scorecard was wrecked and his brain scrambled as he wrote the numbers one and zero on his card.

1-0. 10. (Ten). Double-figures. Six over par.

Norris took 10 shots to complete a hole that should have taken four.

Sure, the fourth was considered the fifth-most difficult hole on Friday – it caused him a mischief on Thursday too – but not this difficult.

So what happened to the 43-year-old over those 504 yards?

Three pars to start had Norris in decent fettle as he took aim towards the far end of the course. Then an errant lash of his driver darkened the mood.

An ugly spray from the tee screamed out of bounds on the right and he was forced to fish another ball from his bag.

Reset, compose yourself, avoid that fairway bunker on the left… what bunker? That bunker you’ve just landed in. The one you took two to get out of on Thursday.

At that stage, Norris was in the sand, three shots deep, and had 230-odd yards to the green. Not great, but not catastrophic. Not yet.

“What was it, the fourth shot? It caught the lip,” he explained. “Then I hit the same club and tried to do the same.”

He told BBC Sport that he tried to “chase something” and, three increasingly infuriated swipes later, he was still in the same bunker.

It was beginning to look like he might never emerge. Like this was his life now.

Finally, fuelled by the fury of a man whose world was falling apart around him, he found just enough elevation to escape, his ball apologetically bounding 39 yards down the fairway.

Norris emerged behind it. A man who had probably lost track of how many times he’d hit the ball, what hole he was on, and even what his name was. “My mind went a little bit numb,” he said.

The records showed he had played seven. The pin was still the thick end of 200 yards away. Too far, as it turned out.

Norris’ approach settled 20-odd yards short left. But somehow he gathered himself to chip to seven feet and hole the putt.

“Shot 10. Ball holed. Double bogey or worse,” recorded the official Open shot tracker.

It was worse. Much, much worse.

Norris would go on to finish five over and destined to miss the cut. Eight of those shots were lost on the fourth across his two days on the Antrim coast.

A couple of pars and he would have been well-placed for the weekend. Brutal.

It took him six to complete the fourth on Thursday but, just like in the first round, he caught a grip of himself to respond with birdie on the fifth.

Another three birdies after the turn – including one from 30 feet on the last – repaired some more of the damage, at least to his self-esteem if not his scorecard.

“Apart from one hole, I actually played quite nicely,” he insisted. “One hole killed me, but I was happy with the way I fought back.

“Take that hole out this week and you never know what happens.”

Given the fourth hole took three shots from him in the 2019 edition of The Open at Portrush, and it would be entirely understandably should Norris want it torn apart.

But the South African, clearly, is a man of substance.

“I’ll take it on again,” he insisted. “I’ll accept the challenge. But I’ll play it a little bit differently next time.”