THERE’S NOTHING LIKE GAA success to stir the souls of the locals and pang the hearts of the exiled.
“ I was very proud of them”, says Shane Lowry of Offaly’s U20 All-Ireland hurling victory last Saturday evening. “I was very happy, but very homesick.
“ It was great for Offaly hurling, great for those young lads, great for Michael Duignan and Leo O’Connor, all the lads who put the effort in. Very proud of what they’ve done. We have a long way to go to catch the big teams, but we showed that we are certainly on the way.”
Lowry was on the wrong side of the Atlantic last weekend, playing the Canadian Open. Opening rounds of 72 and 68 meant Lowry made the cut but had an early tee time on Saturday morning, meaning he walked off the course five minutes before throw-in at Nowlan Park.
“It’s like I played bad on purpose for the first two days!”, he grins. Lowry jumped straight into the back of a courtesy car and watched the first half on his phone and caught the second half in his hotel room. He pulled on his Offaly jersey once he got into the room, though corrects himself when he says he watched the endgame while sitting on his bed.
“Well, I wasn’t sitting much. I was jumping around like an eejit.”
The squad continued their celebrations the following day at the Warehouse in Tullamore, which is co-owned by Lowry. He had to be content to live the local exuberance through the screen of his phone, though he had gone as far as looking up Friday night flights from Toronto to Dublin in the event he missed the cut.
Asked to indulge the hypothetical, Lowry says he doesn’t think he would have hopped on a flight home for the game had he not made the weekend in Canada. (This is one of the rare times in his career in which he has not come across as especially convincing.)
But Lowry is in the middle of a hectic and important run. His Saturday 62 at Valhalla last month catapulted himself into the mix for a PGA Championship at which he ultimately finished T6. There followed last week’s Canadian Open, and the recent victory alongside Zurich Classic earned him safe passage into this week’s Memorial Tournament, a lucrative, signature event on the PGA Tour schedule. That is all preamble, though, to next week’s US Open at Pinehurst.
The sunshine of bona fide major contention and a healthy $640,000 cheque at Valhalla were not enough to override Lowry’s genuine frustrations in the wake of the PGA Championship, saying after the tournament that not winning was a failure. Having tasted major success at the Open Championship in Portrush five years ago, Lowry’s appetite has not been sated.
Pinehurst next week is the latest opportunity for Lowry to double his number of major titles. He is already in an exclusive club but in golf there is always a more restricted sanctum. At the moment Lowry is among 233 men to have won a major: he is now striving to become only the 88th man in history to have won at least two of them.
“Maybe it’s the golfer coming out in me, but I feel the glass is half full with me”, says Lowry. “I feel I am a better player now than I was in 2019, there’s parts of my game that are definitely better.
“I’ve got more mature and my game has improved: living over here [in America] and playing in these big tournaments you have no choice but to improve. You get the best facilities, the best courses, and you get to see where your game is against the best players in the world, so you know what to work on. I drive the ball pretty good. My mid-to-long iron play is probably my strength, which is why I like the tougher tournaments and the bigger events, as you need to be a good mid-to-long iron player to do well in those.”
Things won’t come much tougher this year than the US Open, with the tournament organisers perhaps hinting at things to come with a set-up at last week’s women’s US Open that yielded just two under-par scores by the end of the week. Lowry missed the cut by a shot when the US Open was last played in Pinehurst in 2014, but says living and practising in Florida has allowed him to become much more comfortable with the course’s bermuda grass, on which he struggled last time out.
“I know the golf course will need good iron play, you need to be straight off the tee, and you need to be decent around the green” he says. “If I go there with my game in shape I feel like I can do something.”
Lowry is speaking to promote the launch of the ticket ballot to next year’s Open Championship at Portrush, so has cause to remember the greatest triumph of his career so far. Every part of his game was present and in synch across those four days in 2019, when he took control of the tournament with a 63 on Saturday and endured the worst of the week’s weather to finish the job on Sunday.
“The Saturday evening was probably the most special couple of hours I’ve had on a golf course”, he says. “Playing an Open in your home country is very special, but to be on the back nine shooting an unbelievable score, and finishing the way I did.”
The Sunday was probably Offaly’s biggest sporting occasion prior to last weekend: early morning convoys left for Portrush from Saturday night, with one of Lowry’s friends renting a tiny propeller plane to fly from Kerry on Sunday morning.
“It was the most nervous I’ve been on a first tee, on the Thursday. The first tee on Sunday was nearly easier than Thursday. I say nearly easier: the first tee on Sunday wasn’t a great place, it was quite intimidating. I felt the expectation and it was very, very special. As the week went on the crowds got bigger and it’s something I’ll look back on forever.
“I said to Neil [Manchip, Lowry's coach] that morning, I have no choice today but to go out to win. The level of expectation that day was through the roof. When we go back next year there will be a level of expectation there for me again, but the levels of expectation I have for myself are more than anyone else will have for me.”
So if you don’t want to miss out on your county’s next great sporting day – be the one to create it.
Shane Lowry was speaking to promote the ticket ballot for the 153rd Open at Royal Portrush, 13-20 July 2025. The ticket ballot will be open from 1-31 July, and you can register here.
