After back-to-back missed cuts at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and The Players Championship, Shane Lowry is safely through to the final two rounds of the Texas Children’s Houston Open at Memorial Park.
The Offaly man was uncharacteristically loose with his approach play in Thursday’s opening round but showed his grit to grind out a one-under-par 69 that left him straddling the provisional cutline.
It wasn’t quite vintage Lowry in round two, but a marked improvement with his irons and with his putter saw him put together a three-under-par 67. The good work was all done on the front, as he birdied the third and eighth holes – both par-5s – and holed a nine-footer on the fifth to make the turn at -3.
With the greens firming up continuously, genuine good looks at birdie were few and far between on the back side, but he kept his card clean and goes into the weekend tied for 33rd.
Séamus Power started the day a shot ahead of his fellow countryman but bogeys on the seventh and 14th holes left him needing to play the final two in two-under to make it through. He managed to birdie the first of these after sticking an approach to six feet, but after a wayward drive on 18, he faced a 66-foot chip that he had to hole. Understandably, he played it aggressively but it slipped past and he missed the comeback par putt.
It leaves the Waterford man needing to win next week’s Valero Texas Open if he’s to tee it up in his third Masters Tournament.
Gary Woodland was in a similar position to Power coming into the week, needing to win one of the final two events to earn his Masters invitation and the 2018 U.S. Open champion has put himself in excellent position to do exactly that.
After opening with a six-under 64 to lie one back, he followed with a seven-under 63 to open up a three-stroke lead over Nicolai Højgaard and Jackson Suber.
“I did it all pretty good today,” Woodland said. “I think the best thing I did was I carried the momentum over from last week. I got a lot of confidence last week.”
Woodland opened 2026 by missing four of his first six cuts, with his best finish a T64 before a resurgent T14 last week at the Valspar Championship. That performance came just a week after he sat down with Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard to share his deeply personal battle with PTSD symptoms from surgery to remove a brain tumour, a fight that continues despite outward perceptions from peers and fans that he had recovered past it.
Højgaard, who arrived in Houston as the 47th ranked player in the OWGR, still has some work to do to ensure he remains inside the top 50 and makes his third straight Masters appearance, but he’s put himself in a strong position to do so and he admitted that it’s weighing heavily on his mind between rounds.
“It’s so easy to say it’s not on my mind, good golf will take care of it,” he said. “It’s on my mind 100 percent. We all want to be there. But when I’m playing golf out there, I didn’t think about it today.
“But before you play golf and after the rounds and stuff, you think about it a little bit because you definitely want to be there. I feel like my game is good enough to qualify for it, but there’s two more days here in Houston and I like where my game is at.”
Defending champion Min Woo Lee and fellow Australian Jason Day are at -9, four behind Woodland, while Michael Thorbjornsen, needing a good week to move up from 56th in the OWGR and play in his first Masters shares sixth place with Sam Stevens.
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