Quayle today told how he called the penalties – for illegal taking of preferred lies on four shots – as soon as he realized that he had erred on Thursday, and said how embarrassed that he was to make such “a rookie mistake”.

His opening 66 turned into a 73 but with rounds of 67 on Friday and 66 today, he is at 9-under for the tournament, an astonishing story of resilience. Through three rounds he is just three shots from the lead.

“It’s a mistake that’s totally on me and I totally own it,” he said after today’s 6-under round.The drama started on the 15th green in round one on Moonah Links at the Open course on Thursday.

The 30-year-old professional, who plays mostly in Japan, had just been asked by his playing partner, Tyler McCumber, if preferred lies were in play, and answered that yes, they were, and “I’ve been doing it all day”.

McCumber ultimately was penalized two shots as well for playing from a preferred lie.

At this point, he re-read a document handed out to all players by the Tour, which stated that preferred lies would be allowed on a portion of the third fairway.

The problem was, he had originally read the document as allowing preferred lies across the whole course.

“The fairways were decent,” he said. “You could see how maybe we needed preferred lies because there were a lot of collection areas with divots. Our last three tournaments on tour have been preferred lie. The document I was handed is a little half-page document that is highlighted ‘preferred lie’ and highlighted scorecard length.

“It’s a massive rookie error on my part. I had just assumed on this tour we play preferred lie a lot. I just didn’t think too much more of it. I’m kicking myself now. Turns out on that document it only said it was preferred lie on the third hole in the blue painted area. I guess that sort of sat more in the fine print of the document.”

Quayle could not even play on without addressing the issue. So at 15 green, he asked to speak to the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia referee and Tournament Director Heath McLeod. “I didn’t feel comfortable hitting another shot without addressing it. I felt like I’d done something really wrong. As soon as I realized, I felt sick in the stomach, I thought I’d done something terribly wrong.”

McLeod told Quayle that he would be penalized two strokes for hitting from the wrong place on three of his shots, and one stroke for the other (because he replaced the ball in the same place, just a few centimetres off the green). In one instance, he told McLeod that he very likely placed his ball back in the same spot. “But I couldn’t be 100 percent certain, so I opted to take the two shots (penalty).”

McLeod said: “We’re proud of how Anthony’s handled it. As soon as he realised his mistake, he’s called me over, and went through it out at No. 15 green.

“He took responsibility for his actions straight away and we worked through the four separate occasions he had breached the rules and he accepted the penalty without any fuss.

“It’s just shows the character of Anthony really. To have something like that happen on Thursday, to put it behind him and come out and play some great golf the last two days is great to see.”

Quayle has contemplated it all and played brilliantly since.

“After I had a bit of time to process what happened on Thursday night, I sort of grew the opinion that ‘let’s treat this as a bit of a challenge and see what we can do. Making the cut with a seven-stroke penalty is going to be impressive’,” he said.

“After I made the cut, now it’s ‘finish as high as I possibly can because it’s going to be pretty impressive wherever I finish this week’. I sort of want the story to be as good as it can be going forward. It could be one that I remember for a long time.”

PHOTO: Anthony Quayle on his way to a 66 at Moonah today. Image: Daniel Pockett