Lowry insists Europe won't roll over for US in Rome
Rory McIlroy remains at the centre of talking heads in the LIV Golf row but Shane Lowry has set his sights on winning back the Ryder Cup with a new wave of European talent next year.
The world number 20 plays with up and coming Dane Ramus Hojgaard in the Alfred Dunhill Links at Carnoustie looking to push on in his bid to make Luke Donald’s team
The BMW PGA winner (35) is ranked top of the Ryder Cup standings ahead of McIlroy, Italian Open winner Robert Macintyre and French Open champion Guido Miggliozzi and he believes Sunday’s Presidents Cup result proves the US are not invincible
“The Americans don’t have a god-given right to go and win so you just go out there and go against them as best you can,” Lowry told Sky Sports News after watching the US struggle at times to close out a 17.5-12.5 win at Quail Hollow
“And hopefully you put them under a lot of pressure and when it gets to Sunday afternoon, you hole the right putts at the right time. At certain points on Sunday, if the Internationals hole the right putt here or there, the result might have been a little different. It was good to see them give it a go. It was good to see Tom Kim running around and hopefully I can be part of that highlight reel next September.”
As for a new-look European team, Lowry said: “It was nice to see a few of the younger lads get off to a good start in qualifying. The likes of Bob, Guido Miggliozi and the Hojgaards, I don’t mind pulling on the shirt beside them on the first tee.
"If the majority of us are in good form and confident, we can go to Italy next year and hopefully win that trophy back.”
He’d also love to win at St Andrews, admitting: “To win this tournament would be very special, and it would definitely be another box ticked in my career.
“I'm going along nicely, and I've won a few nice tournaments. I'd like to become a bit more consistent, winning a bit more than every two or three years.”
McIlroy is also looking for his first win at St Andrews but when it comes to the LIV Golf row, he hopes a solution can be found.
”I'm just a golfer but the powers that be need to sit down and have a conversation,” he told BBC. "Right now with two lawsuits going on, and how heightened the rhetoric has been, I think we just need to let it cool off a little bit.
"While that is trundling on I can't see anything happening. It has been an ugly year but there is a solution to everything. If we can send rockets to the moon and bring them back again and have them land on their own I'm sure we can figure out how to make professional golf cohesive again.”
He also said: "I don't want a fractured game. The game of golf is ripping itself apart and that's no good for anyone. It's not good for the guys on the traditional system or the guys on the other side either.
"Right now, with where everything is, it's probably not the right time but we probably can't leave it too much longer. I'm all for getting around the table and sorting things out.”
McIlroy insists the LIV Golf rebels demanding Official World Ranking points should not be given preferential treatment and must “play by the rules” like all other tours.
As their rankings plummet, LIV Golf members wrote to OWGR chief Peter Dawson nearly two weeks ago pleading with him to included the Saudi-backed tour in the rankings and “to include, on a retroactive basis”, the results of LIV Golf events played to date.
Having only applied for points in June, McIlroy believes LIV Golf should follow the same rules as the other 23 member tours, though that process can take up to two years to complete.
“If they meet the criteria, they can get World Ranking Points,” McIlroy told Sky Sports News at St Andrews, where he returns for the first time since losing out to Australia’s Cameron Smith, now a LIV member, in The 150th Open.
“I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t as long as they meet the criteria that are set out. The one thing that has been frustrating from the start of this is they just don’t want to play by the rules that have been in place for so long.
“There can’t be one set of rules for a certain amount of people and another set of rules for everyone else.
“Everyone has to abide by the same rules here and if they are willing to abide by the rules, 100pc they should get world ranking points.
“But the way everything is right now—the way the tour is set up—I just think it makes it very difficult for them to make that argument.”
After coming up short in The Open at St Andrews in July, McIlroy is looking for his first win in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship and targeting victory with his father Gerry in the Pro-Am event played over Carnoustie, Kingsbarns and the Old Course.
"I don't think it would quite make up for missing out on a Claret Jug but it would certainly soften the blow," McIlroy said. "But I've got memories around St Andrews that will last me a lifetime even if that's not winning an Open Championship.”
He said he was proud to bounce back by winning the Tour Championship and the FedEx Cup.
"I feel like time and time again, I've been able to bounce back from some adversity," said McIlroy. "I think once the Open was done, I just reset my goals on what I thought a successful season would look like and that's what I went off and that's what I was able to achieve.”
Pádraig Harrington and Jonathan Caldwell complete the Irish challenge in Scotland while in the US, Seamus Power returns at the PGA Tour’s Sanderson Farms Championship in Mississippi as Stephanie Meadow plays The Ascendant LPGA at the Colony in Dallas.
Leona Maguire was unable to join Meadow in Dallas as her passport has still not been released by the South Korean embassy as she seeks a visa for next month’s BMW Ladies Championship.
Meanwhile, Tom McKibbin, John Murphy, Ruaidhri McGee, Conor Purcell, Paul Dunne and Gavin Moynihan play the Challenge Tour’s Hopps Open de Provence.
