Niall Kelly
reports from Trump International, Doonbeg
IT’S FAIR TO say that Pádraig Harrington saw this coming before anyone else.
It was the three-time Major winner that called the shot on Shane Lowry’s week, waxing lyrical about the state of Lowry’s game and anointing it “the best version I’ve seen of him”.
In glorious conditions in Doonbeg on Friday morning, Lowry lived up to that billing, briefly putting the assembled crowd on 59 Watch through 12 near-flawless holes before closing out a new course record of eight-under par 62 to take a three-shot clubhouse lead and seize control of this Irish Open.
Was this what Harrington meant by the best version of Shane Lowry?
“This is definitely up there,” the Clara native laughed afterwards. “It’s one of the better rounds of golf that I’ve ever played.”
Lowry waves to the crowd after a birdie on the seventh hole. Ben Brady / INPHO
Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO
From the moment he hit his opening drive at 9.40am, Lowry looked like, and played like, a man totally at ease. Once the first birdie putt had dropped on the third hole, the moments of frustration were few and far between.
Even the stickiest spot of the day – a horrible break on the par-five 10th which saw his approach get caught up in the long stuff short of the green – ended up as Lowry’s personal highlight of the day: a Houdini-esque escape to save par from 10 feet and keep that early-round momentum rolling into the back nine.
His only dropped shot of the day, a tricky four-footer for par on the 13th, was met with eyes raised to heaven and a rueful shrug of the head as he walked off the green, but that one moment aside, broad smiles were the order of the day.
“I played great,” he said afterwards. “Every time I kept making birdie, I just kept going, wanting to birdie the next.
“I felt like I was pretty in control out there, so it was good fun out there. It’s been a while since I’ve had that much fun on the golf course, so I’ll take it.”
Lowry's opening par of the day came at the third hole. Brian Lawless / PA / Alamy
Brian Lawless / PA / Alamy / PA / Alamy
After the gruelling endurance test of Thursday’s glacially-slow opening round, Friday was an entirely different proposition. The three- or four-club wind that Lowry and others faced on Thursday was considerably more benign, though not totally absent, for Friday morning’s early wave. There were still some traffic jams to contend with too, though nothing like the opening-round gridlock.
On the few occasions when play did slow in front of them, Lowry was relaxed, bouncing off playing partners Jon Rahm and Patrick Reed, who shot 67 and 68 respectively, and both of whom will feel that they could have gone even lower.
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Lowry’s first birdie chance of the day slipped by at the second, but his record-breaking round sparked into life with a sublime approach to the third, tucking it into a postage stamp landing zone to the left of a front-left pin, feeding down to within four feet.
A few hundred of the early risers had already staked out their spot around the third green, and Lowry didn’t disappoint. Waiting a few yards away on the fourth tee box, Rory McIlroy, Robert MacIntyre and Brooks Koepka won’t have been left wondering who the crowd were roaring on.
Lowry: “It’s one of the better rounds of golf that I’ve ever played.” Brian Lawless / PA Images / Alamy
Brian Lawless / PA Images / Alamy / PA Images / Alamy
That was the catalyst for a remarkable run of seven birdies across Lowry’s next nine holes. Rahm deserved an assist at the very least on the fourth, the Spaniard’s uphill putt giving Lowry the measure of his own 23-footer, which he judged to perfection.
Doonbeg’s fifth green, protected by soaring dunes, is the kind of natural amphitheatre which is this course’s calling card. As young and old watched on, Lowry went straight at the flag into the teeth of the wind, leaving himself with little more than a foot for a third straight birdie to move into the outright lead on six-under.
When Rahm looked incredulously at the amount of right-to-left break on his missed birdie putt at the sixth, it may have prompted Lowry into some second thoughts; his own birdie putt, a 17-footer, started and stayed high, leaving a tap-in for a tidy par.
The par-three seventh is one of the few areas on the course with a greenside grandstand, as well as a greenside bar, and Lowry gave the fans what they came for, sinking his longest putt of the day, a 24-footer from back to front.
Specators line up to get a view of Lowry on the eighth hole. Ben Brady / INPHO
Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO
If four birdies in five holes had the adrenaline flowing, Lowry didn’t let it show. As the gallery expanded around him, and the number of kids with arms outstretched increased, he fed off the energy without allowing it to verge into distraction. There’d be plenty of time for high-fives when all was said and done.
That composure served him in good stead when he found himself way right off the tee, caddy Dermot Byrne helping him to unpick a situation that could have quickly turned into trouble. With 107 to one of the right fairway bunkers, Byrne gave the yardage before quickly reminding Lowry that there’s “no point bringing that trap into play”.
“How do you think it’s going to come out?” Lowry asked, inspecting the spectator-trampled lie.
“Decent. Spinny,” Byrne replied, leaving Lowry with his five-iron and a parting reminder to “commit to it”.
It came out as expected, finishing a foot or two short of the bunker in question, giving Lowry the angle to attack the pin for another birdie which stretched his lead out to three shots, and he wrapped up the front nine with another birdie to go out in six-under par 30, sending a dart to inside two feet.
For his part, Rahm finished out his front nine with a very different perspective, three-putting for bogey and then firing his golf ball out onto the empty beach below.
Lowry’s par save on the 10th was every bit as important as any of the nine birdies on the card, and both player and caddy knew it, sharing a quick fist bump on the side of the green after conjuring their way out of trouble.
The expectation this week is that the course will split between the scoring holes on the front nine, where the wind is typically at the players’ backs, and the trickier back nine which plays largely into the wind. Such was Lowry’s form on Friday that any such distinction seemed entirely artificial.
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Again, he took full advantage of the par threes, picking up a birdie at the 11th and quickly following it with another on the par-four 12th. He knew his approach was a good one before he could even see it, the reaction from the ever-expanding crowd telling him all he needed to know.
Lowry's par save on the 10th hole proved to be a pivotal moment in his round. Ben Brady / INPHO
Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO
Now eight-under through 12 holes, Lowry briefly allowed his mind to wander to three closing birdies and a landmark round of 59.
“I thought about it – yeah, I did think about it until I three-putted 13,” he admitted afterwards.
“Out in 30 and the back nine is only 34, so, yeah, you do kind of think about it a little bit.
“But I think I was very good, I just was at the job at hand today. I know I made a little mistake on 13, but I think I did a good job after that of playing the rest of the round really well and giving myself a couple of chances on the way in.”
He will take great heart from how he bounced back from his only bogey of the day, balancing the books with one final birdie on 15 before parring his way home, taking the acclaim of the grandstand crowd around the 18th.
Lowry shakes hands with Jon Rahm after finishing his round on the eighteenth green. Ben Brady / INPHO
Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO
On the walk back from the scorer’s tent, a familiar American voice caught his attention.
“You like our little golf course, Shane,” boomed Larry Glick, head of the Trump International golf portfolio.
With the rest of the field now lining him up in their sights, and the prospect of half an inch of rain on Saturday afternoon – not to mention the anticipated disruption to the action on the course – the tournament’s new leader modestly waved off the praise.
“I don’t know if I’ll like it tomorrow.”
Whatever tomorrow brings, today was a day for Shane Lowry to savour.
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Freewheeling Shane Lowry soaks up the fun as he wrestles control of Irish Open
IT’S FAIR TO say that Pádraig Harrington saw this coming before anyone else.
It was the three-time Major winner that called the shot on Shane Lowry’s week, waxing lyrical about the state of Lowry’s game and anointing it “the best version I’ve seen of him”.
In glorious conditions in Doonbeg on Friday morning, Lowry lived up to that billing, briefly putting the assembled crowd on 59 Watch through 12 near-flawless holes before closing out a new course record of eight-under par 62 to take a three-shot clubhouse lead and seize control of this Irish Open.
Was this what Harrington meant by the best version of Shane Lowry?
“This is definitely up there,” the Clara native laughed afterwards. “It’s one of the better rounds of golf that I’ve ever played.”
From the moment he hit his opening drive at 9.40am, Lowry looked like, and played like, a man totally at ease. Once the first birdie putt had dropped on the third hole, the moments of frustration were few and far between.
Even the stickiest spot of the day – a horrible break on the par-five 10th which saw his approach get caught up in the long stuff short of the green – ended up as Lowry’s personal highlight of the day: a Houdini-esque escape to save par from 10 feet and keep that early-round momentum rolling into the back nine.
His only dropped shot of the day, a tricky four-footer for par on the 13th, was met with eyes raised to heaven and a rueful shrug of the head as he walked off the green, but that one moment aside, broad smiles were the order of the day.
“I played great,” he said afterwards. “Every time I kept making birdie, I just kept going, wanting to birdie the next.
“I felt like I was pretty in control out there, so it was good fun out there. It’s been a while since I’ve had that much fun on the golf course, so I’ll take it.”
After the gruelling endurance test of Thursday’s glacially-slow opening round, Friday was an entirely different proposition. The three- or four-club wind that Lowry and others faced on Thursday was considerably more benign, though not totally absent, for Friday morning’s early wave. There were still some traffic jams to contend with too, though nothing like the opening-round gridlock.
On the few occasions when play did slow in front of them, Lowry was relaxed, bouncing off playing partners Jon Rahm and Patrick Reed, who shot 67 and 68 respectively, and both of whom will feel that they could have gone even lower.
Lowry’s first birdie chance of the day slipped by at the second, but his record-breaking round sparked into life with a sublime approach to the third, tucking it into a postage stamp landing zone to the left of a front-left pin, feeding down to within four feet.
A few hundred of the early risers had already staked out their spot around the third green, and Lowry didn’t disappoint. Waiting a few yards away on the fourth tee box, Rory McIlroy, Robert MacIntyre and Brooks Koepka won’t have been left wondering who the crowd were roaring on.
That was the catalyst for a remarkable run of seven birdies across Lowry’s next nine holes. Rahm deserved an assist at the very least on the fourth, the Spaniard’s uphill putt giving Lowry the measure of his own 23-footer, which he judged to perfection.
Doonbeg’s fifth green, protected by soaring dunes, is the kind of natural amphitheatre which is this course’s calling card. As young and old watched on, Lowry went straight at the flag into the teeth of the wind, leaving himself with little more than a foot for a third straight birdie to move into the outright lead on six-under.
When Rahm looked incredulously at the amount of right-to-left break on his missed birdie putt at the sixth, it may have prompted Lowry into some second thoughts; his own birdie putt, a 17-footer, started and stayed high, leaving a tap-in for a tidy par.
The par-three seventh is one of the few areas on the course with a greenside grandstand, as well as a greenside bar, and Lowry gave the fans what they came for, sinking his longest putt of the day, a 24-footer from back to front.
If four birdies in five holes had the adrenaline flowing, Lowry didn’t let it show. As the gallery expanded around him, and the number of kids with arms outstretched increased, he fed off the energy without allowing it to verge into distraction. There’d be plenty of time for high-fives when all was said and done.
That composure served him in good stead when he found himself way right off the tee, caddy Dermot Byrne helping him to unpick a situation that could have quickly turned into trouble. With 107 to one of the right fairway bunkers, Byrne gave the yardage before quickly reminding Lowry that there’s “no point bringing that trap into play”.
“How do you think it’s going to come out?” Lowry asked, inspecting the spectator-trampled lie.
“Decent. Spinny,” Byrne replied, leaving Lowry with his five-iron and a parting reminder to “commit to it”.
It came out as expected, finishing a foot or two short of the bunker in question, giving Lowry the angle to attack the pin for another birdie which stretched his lead out to three shots, and he wrapped up the front nine with another birdie to go out in six-under par 30, sending a dart to inside two feet.
For his part, Rahm finished out his front nine with a very different perspective, three-putting for bogey and then firing his golf ball out onto the empty beach below.
Lowry’s par save on the 10th was every bit as important as any of the nine birdies on the card, and both player and caddy knew it, sharing a quick fist bump on the side of the green after conjuring their way out of trouble.
The expectation this week is that the course will split between the scoring holes on the front nine, where the wind is typically at the players’ backs, and the trickier back nine which plays largely into the wind. Such was Lowry’s form on Friday that any such distinction seemed entirely artificial.
Again, he took full advantage of the par threes, picking up a birdie at the 11th and quickly following it with another on the par-four 12th. He knew his approach was a good one before he could even see it, the reaction from the ever-expanding crowd telling him all he needed to know.
Now eight-under through 12 holes, Lowry briefly allowed his mind to wander to three closing birdies and a landmark round of 59.
“I thought about it – yeah, I did think about it until I three-putted 13,” he admitted afterwards.
“Out in 30 and the back nine is only 34, so, yeah, you do kind of think about it a little bit.
“But I think I was very good, I just was at the job at hand today. I know I made a little mistake on 13, but I think I did a good job after that of playing the rest of the round really well and giving myself a couple of chances on the way in.”
He will take great heart from how he bounced back from his only bogey of the day, balancing the books with one final birdie on 15 before parring his way home, taking the acclaim of the grandstand crowd around the 18th.
On the walk back from the scorer’s tent, a familiar American voice caught his attention.
“You like our little golf course, Shane,” boomed Larry Glick, head of the Trump International golf portfolio.
With the rest of the field now lining him up in their sights, and the prospect of half an inch of rain on Saturday afternoon – not to mention the anticipated disruption to the action on the course – the tournament’s new leader modestly waved off the praise.
“I don’t know if I’ll like it tomorrow.”
Whatever tomorrow brings, today was a day for Shane Lowry to savour.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Doonbeg Golf Irish Open Padraig Harrington Shane Lowry Shane's World Trump International Golf Links