Lowry pushes his way into the top 20 at TPC Sawgrass

From making the cut on the number, Shane Lowry managed to eke out a top-20 finish at The Players Championship thanks to a final-round 67.

“Sometimes just making the cut means a lot to us out here,” Lowry tweeted on Friday after being made sweat for the last hour or so of play as the cutline threatened to jump to -2 which would’ve left the Offalyman – and world number three and current ‘made cut streak’ leader Xander Schauffele – on the outside looking in. “Very happy to have a tee time this weekend. Let’s push on,” he continued.

And push on he did, especially on Sunday. Starting on the back nine as the PGA Tour shifted the schedule forward in an effort to beat the electrical weather due to roll through, it looked as though his early week frustrations were set to continue as good birdie chances came and went on 10 and 11, but he continued to hit the ball extremely well and took advantage of a peach of a tee shot on the par-3 13th to open his birdie account.

From there, he reeled off four-in-a-row, sinking a 16-footer on 14, a 12-footer on 15, and cleaned up a four-footer after a neat chip from just short of the par-5 16th, and he made the turn at -4 for the day and -3 overall.

Further birdies on three and seven got him to -5 overall and gave him an outside chance of scraping into the top 10 with a birdie-birdie finish, but a bad swing on the eighth tee – his first real mistake with an iron in hand – proved costly and lead to a double bogey.

His response was impressive, finding the front edge of the ninth green with two mighty blows and two-putting for a closing birdie that secured his fourth top-20 finish at the PGA Tour’s Flagship event in his last five outings at TPC Sawgrass.

More encouragingly, having been close to the bottom of the table in Strokes Gained: Putting after 36 holes, he ranked seventh in the metric on the final day, something that bodes well with Augusta National and The Masters just around the corner.

He also ends the week $240,220 wealthier. Not bad for a week that he’d classify as a little disappointing overall.