Shane Lowry should win more often - Augusta would be a good place to start

Should we expect more out of Shane Lowry?

There’s a starter for 10, now. Behold the cowardice of a sports columnist who starts with a question, knowing full well that if he had any stones at all he’d take a view and defend it with facts and stand over it, daring all-comers to disagree. Airily posing questions like that in a column is a cop-out. It’s lily-livered. Woke, probably.

Be a man, Mal. Tell the people what’s what. Tell them that yes, damn right we should expect more out of Lowry. Here’s a guy that can win big tournaments. British Open. Bridgestone. HSBC. Wentworth. Anyone who can take down titles on three continents when the world’s best players are chasing him ought to be doing it more often.

Instead, Lowry has won six tournaments in 15 years. Two of them have been in Ireland. He’s won just once since that incredible 2019 Open at Portrush. One win in almost five years is, by any elite standards, less than what his return ought to be.

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Twice in the past month he has held a share of the 54-hole lead on the PGA Tour. On both occasions, he shot two-over-par on the front nine in his final round and his race was run by the turn. His best result in 2023 was a tie for third in the Irish Open, a week where he hung around manfully at the K Club but never quite threatened to win.

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So yeah, we should expect more of him. There’s nothing about the highest level of golf that fazes him or makes him wonder whether or not he belongs. That’s where he lives, that’s where he goes to work. Winning is the currency at his level and he is more than comfortable in that world.

That’s him in the last episode of Netflix’s Full Swing show, roaring at Joe LaCava on the 18th green of the Ryder Cup: “Hey Joe, get out of the way, you pr*ck!” LaCava caddied for Fred Couples when he won the Masters in 1992 and for Tiger Woods in 2019. He’s been a fixture at the top of the game for three decades. Lowry didn’t think twice about giving him what for and berating him in front of the watching world at the point of greatest tension in the year’s most compelling golf tournament.

Plenty of golfers are blessed with the skills but have trouble convincing themselves of the fact. That’s not Lowry. If anything, it’s the flipside of that. Pull up any of the statistical categories and he generally around the upper-middle of the pack. When he gets himself into the mix, it’s never the collywobbles that hold him back. More often, it’s just that he doesn’t have the goods.

When he contended at the Masters in 2022, any hope he had on Sunday disappeared on the Par-3 fourth. Anyone who has ever watched the Masters can picture most of the holes on the back nine but the fourth is one of those that doesn’t always get a lot of play on the TV coverage. It’s the most difficult of all the Par 3s, 220 yards long, often into the wind, with trees down the right and a bunker guarding the front of the green.

There’s no hiding place on that fourth tee. You either have the shot or you don’t. In 2022, Lowry was between a three-iron and a four-iron and ended up blazing a four high and right into the trees. He took a six and that was his tournament finished. The pressure didn’t get to Lowry that Sunday – his skills let him down.

[ Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry leave Augusta with plenty of positives ]

Maybe. Or maybe it’s not that simple. Lowry turned 37 during the week and you’d be hard pushed to find an Irish sports fan who doesn’t love him unconditionally. He has won over €21 million in on-course earnings since turning professional in 2009. He has gone from being a four-handicapper at the age of 16 to a Major winner and two-time (so far) Ryder Cup player. Maybe he has exceeded expectations and all of this is gravy.

He heads to Augusta next week as the dark horse’s dark horse. Plenty of the LIV dudes are ahead of him in the betting, which is presumably a case of absence making the heart grow more forgetful. Bryson DeChambeau has always stank the place out at Augusta – in 24 Masters rounds, he’s broken 70 three times and he hasn’t made a cut there since 2021. Lowry has played the same number of times but has shot six rounds in the 60s and was tied for third the year before last. Yet Lowry is 45/1 and DeChambeau is 28s.

[ Shane Lowry’s game tee-to-green is top drawer but his putting is letting him down ]

After struggling with his first couple of visits, Lowry seems to have got the hang of Augusta over the past few years. He has been in the top 10 on the leaderboard after eight of the last 12 Masters rounds. According to the golf stat supremo Justin Ray, only three players have finished in the top 25 at the Masters in each of the last four years – Scottie Scheffler, Hideki Matsuyama and Lowry. The other two have won their green jackets and are made men for life.

So yes, absolutely we should expect Lowry to be up there next week, chasing them down and threatening to join them. McIlroy gets dismissed all the time by casual sports fans, even though he’s won 10 tournaments worldwide in the past five years to Lowry’s solitary one. Imagine McIlroy had blown back-to-back 54-hole leads in the past month – you wouldn’t be able to move for people calling him every name under the sun.

There’s a comfort in existing just at that level below, where Lowry doesn’t have to win tournaments for people to still think he’s a grand fella and one of Ireland’s great sporting ambassadors. But that’s probably doing him no favours, when all comes to all.

He should win more often. No question about it.