After striping a 320-yard drive down the last, then rifling a mid-iron to just over 35 feet, Shane Lowry was thinking ‘eagle’ and a Sunday charge to give him a chance at capturing a second Irish Open title having won as an amateur at County Louth back in 2009.
He gave the eagle putt a good run, but as it had all day, the ball refused to go in the hole, slipping a couple of feet past and he horseshoed the hole on the birdie putt, eventually having to settle for par and a two-under round of 70 that moved him to -6 overall, but he knew his chances of winning the tournament rested on that eagle putt.
“I played really, really nice, hit the ball tee-to-green really good, way better than yesterday,” he said afterwards. “Then I just couldn’t get the ball in the hole on the greens. It was disappointing, frustrating.
“But a lot of positives. I think there’s a really low score in me tomorrow. I’m out of the tournament, so it’s disappointing, like I’m too far back, too many people ahead of me.”
Birdies on the second and fourth holes was an ideal start, but he couldn’t find the momentum he required to shoot the low score needed to truly put the cat among the pigeons with the gusting winds promising a tricky afternoon for the leaders.
But he knows he should’ve been a few strokes closer, even though he didn’t know then what score the 54-hole leader would have.
“Yeah, definitely should have been a few better. You look at the scoreboard and it’s kind of like, God, if I was sitting even on 8- or 9-under now I’d be pretty chuffed with myself and be watching the leaders the afternoon, but I think it’s always disappointing when you’re not in the tournament,” he said.
“Going into Sunday, you don’t feel like you are, but I feel like there is a low score in me this week.
“How low, I don’t know, but yeah, hopefully go out there tomorrow (and do it). I feel like as the week has gone on, I’ve played better. Hopefully I can go out and shoot a low one tomorrow.”
Having played the vast majority of his golf on the PGA Tour this season, he’s just come off the heavy FedEx Cup Playoff schedule, and he feels that he struggled adjusting to the pace of the greens more than anything this week.
“Look, we’ve had a lot of rain this week, the greens are soft and they’re bumpy. I lost confidence. You miss a couple early on, you lose confidence quickly. Well, I do,” he explained.
“It’s just hard. They are obviously not as firm or not as fast as we play on the PGA Tour.
“I feel like the reason I’m missing short puts, I’m hitting them too hard. I’m trying to jam them in the hole. My pace has been off.
“Even that one on the last, if it didn’t catch the lip, it’s probably two or three feet past. From two and a half feet, you shouldn’t be hitting a two feet past.
“It’s my own fault and an adjustment that I have to make. But yeah, I’ll move on and see.”
On a more positive note, despite his incredibly consistent play throughout the PGA Tour season, he was never entirely happy with his driver but a recent change at the top of the bag is beginning to pay dividends.
“It was very good today again,” he said of his new big stick. “I couldn’t be happier with it. Long. I hit that drive down 18, pretty straight 320, I don’t know where I got that out of.
“I just feel confident and I feel like I can go after it. So yeah, it’s good to have that bit of a puzzle (done) finally.”
Leave a comment