Shane Lowry is still feeling the sting of Sunday’s painful near miss but hopes he can make amends if he finds himself in a winning position at this week’s Hero Dubai Desert Classic.
Lowry had the Dubai Invitational in his grasp before a devastating double bogey finish allowed Nacho Elvira to take the title as his wait for a first win since 2022 went on. But he has taken the positives and hopes the learnings will benefit him the next time he is in that position.
“I’m okay now,” Lowry said of the mental anguish of losing in his pre-DDC press conference. “I went and packed up my stuff at the hotel, and I got in my car and I came over to the hotel for this tournament. I felt like sitting in my room for the evening on Sunday evening but I went and met some friends for dinner.
“Kind of tried to have as good a time as I could, but you kind of go to bed that night and you wake up thinking, what if, you know, what could I have done differently. Even yesterday was a bit of a slow day for me. I came out here and hit some balls and played nine holes.
“Yeah, just trying to get it out of my system really. But I feel good today. I think speaking to people closest to me over the last day or so, like you can only take positives from it, really. I played great last week, haven’t played in a while. First tournament of the year. It’s nice to get the year off to a great start and hopefully it’s a sign of things to come for the rest of the year.”
The 2019 Open champion feels after a few days of chatting with his background team that he has arrived at Emirates Golf Club with a clean slate and is ready to get back in the mix again. Although the focus of many will be on his closing hole double bogey which saw him eventually finish in a share of third behind Daniel Hillier and Elvira, he insists there was a catalogue of errors throughout the week that he felt also let him down.
“I think you can’t be stupid and say, Oh, let’s just forget about last week and move on. I think you have to kind of look at what you learned from it.”
“Like I’ve been on tour a long time now, and I feel like you’re always learning week-to-week, day-to-day, and like last week is no different. The great thing about golf is like even if I won last week, you’re still here as another player this week, and you’re still here teeing it up on Thursday and you’re wanting to play well. No matter what went behind you, it doesn’t change anything going forward.
“So yeah, I think just a lot of open and honest conversations with my coaches, my team and myself and my caddie, what we did wrong, what can we do better. You know, there certainly is a few things. It wasn’t just the last hole last week. There was a few instances during the week. Like I probably had a few too many 3-putts last week. I had a few, you know, times where I probably dropped silly shots.
“So it wasn’t just the last hole last week that let me down. It was a few things along the way. But I felt like I played some great golf, and I think you need to look at that and look at the positives and bring them forward.”
The Offaly man has won seven times in his career out of approximately 400 starts so he joked that he is used to losing at this stage of his life but that doesn’t mean it softens the blow of a near miss. He has done just about everything since his last victory at the BMW PGA Championship in September 2022 where he held off Rory McIlroy at Wentworth.
But the 38-year-old is experienced enough to put keep plugging away in the hope that the door into the winners’ circle will open.
“It’s clear that it’s been a while since I’ve won a tournament. So to get a win at any tournament on either of the tours I play would be really nice.
“Like last week hurt. Did it hurt as much as like a really big event, a major or something? No, absolutely not. I still want to win. I still tee it up every week wanting to win. And that’s what’s hard about this game, isn’t it. There’s plenty of players that played last week that are over on the range now trying to find their game, but they didn’t feel as bad as I did leaving Dubai Creek Sunday evening.
“So that’s the funny thing about golf. I’ve probably played close to 400 tournaments in my career, and I’ve only won seven. You lose a lot more than you win. So you get used to losing (laughs) as a professional golfer.
“Yes, there’s certain weeks where you finish fifth and you’re happy, or third and you’re happy, but more often than not, you leave a tournament on the Sunday evening and you’re not happy with yourself.
“You get used to it and you learn to deal with it and move on and look at the future.”
Leave a comment