Lowry opens up: "I was almost reduced to tears. It was that type of a day"
Shane Lowry reacts on the fifth hole during a practice round ahead of the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst Resort & C.C. (Course No. 2) in Village of Pinehurst, N.C. on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. (Mike Ehrmann/USGA)
They don’t do confession boxes on the range at the US Open but Shane Lowry just can’t lie. He has to forgive himself.
With the cloud of Sunday’s career-high, horror 85 at the Memorial Tournament a little less black than it was 48 hours earlier, he’s hoping the game that “taketh away” so often will “giveth” again at Pinehurst No. 2 this week.
Having matched the lowest score ever posted in a major — a scintillating Saturday 62 en route to sixth place in the PGA Championship at Valhalla — has every reason to be cheerful.
He admitted was at his lowest ebb on Sunday night and revealed he was “close to tears” when his manager Brian Moran tried to broach the subject of the seven bogeys, the two double-bogeys and the triple bogey seven that cancelled out the lone birdie he made at Muirfield Village as he posted the highest score of his professional career by four full strokes.
But aided by some well-chosen words from Moran, his coach Neil Manchip and golf whisperer extraordinaire Dr Bob Rotella, he’s ready to put his neck in the block and try again.
“Look, I’d be lying if I said I was full of confidence,” Lowry admitted at the sun-scorched practice ground, where players are grumbling loudly about the difficulty of the test in store.
“Anytime you shoot a score like that it’s not good for your mind or your game. But it is what it is and you have to take it on the chin and move on.
“Obviously I’ve been going well this year, shot a lot of good scores and had a lot of decent finishes. So it’s a funny old game because even with all the good golf I’ve played this year, coming in this week, all you’re thinking about is one round of golf and that was last Sunday.
‘It just got away from me,” he said. “And look, I tried over every one of those shots. I tried my best to shoot the best score I could, and unfortunately, that was the best score I could shoot on Sunday. That’s golf. This game brings you back down to earth with a bang and that’s what it did to me.
“Not making any excuses, I hit the ball 85 times. Actually I didn’t hit the ball 85 times, I had a few penalty strokes in there, I posted an 85 and it is what it is.
“All of a sudden, before you know it, it kind of gets embarrassing and it is tough. But days like that make the good days better and my next good day will be very good.
“I have an opportunity this week maybe to do something a bit different and to come back after a round like that would be special. I am going to try my best.”
Lowry’s tour family knows how to drag him out of the depths of despair and Rotella, who was in town for Pádraig Harrington’s Hall of Fame induction on Monday night, simply told him to “forgive” himself.
“Look, I had a tough day yesterday,” the Offaly man confessed. “Sunday night was tough. I was fortunate that I got here and my dad and the lads were here. I wouldn’t have liked to have been on my own on Sunday night.
“It would have been a hard place to be away from my family for four weeks, and you start to wonder why you do it and what it’s all for and stuff like that. But I got to the house on Sunday night and the lads were there to cheer me up.
“I put in a really long day here yesterday and I hit a lot of balls for me. I don’t normally do that, but I needed to get it out of my system. And I came out to the golf course today and I was in much better form.
“I felt a bit alright out there today and feel like I’m hitting the ball a little bit better. Yeah, it’s going to take a decent mental grind for me over the next few days to perform well this week because a lot’s going on.”
Lowry gets down himself when things go wrong and he admits he relies heavily on his support network.
“To be honest, I put myself down a little bit too much maybe at times,” he said. “But I've got a great team of people around me that are here. I had a great chat with Neil on Sunday night when I got in.
“Brian started to talk to me about it and I just said, 'Brian, I don't really want to talk about it now, to be honest', because I didn't know if I could talk about it. I was almost reduced to tears. It was that type of a day.
“But this game is a funny way of like paying you back at the times you least expect it. So who knows what will happen this week.”
A few well-chosen words from Rotella have turned despairing golfers into world beaters overnight and Lowry took full advantage after their post-Hall of Fame chat on Monday.
“If it wasn’t the US Open I don’t know if I would be here,” Lowry said. “I was fortunate Bob is here for Pádraig’s Hall of Fame—I do a bit of work with Bob— and I had a chat with him for half an hour last night after the ceremony, so that was nice, get a clear mind.
“Bob is great. He just told me I need to forgive myself and allow yourself to do that. The one thing you can’t do is dwell on it, and you just have to forget about it and move on and go back to what I do best and what I do best is playing the game the way I see it.”
Given the brutal test that awaits this week, the six inches between the ears will be key for Lowry, who was overheard on the range on Monday telling a colleague, “I forgot how f***ing hard this place is.”
“Yeah, it’s going to be one of the tougher US Opens and I am trying not to talk myself out of it too much,” he said. “There’s a lot of negative talk going around with the players. It’s going to be so hard. All you can do is try to stay in your own lane and try to do your best.
“You’re going to hit good shots and not get rewarded. So it's going to be a pure mental battle but one that I think I'll be ready for.
“I stood on the second green out there and I was thinking, ‘How did six over miss the cut the last time’, because that's what I was. I missed the cut by a shot. It's a very tough tough golf course.
“But someone will shoot five-under on Thursday. Someone always does. I would say the winning score will be close to par.
“So you know, it's important that if you get off to a bad start, you keep going. Make a few pars, get yourself back on track and then see where it leaves you. It's US open. It's supposed to be tough. I just hope it's fair.”
