Shane Lowry was in a stalking position after the third round of the Dubai Invitational in January, sitting in second place, two shots behind the leader. In his brief TV interview afterwards, there were only three questions, but the last one was sprinkled with salt and sugar.
“Played some lovely golf last year,” the interviewer said. “A couple of second places and a third, but three years since you won last, what would it mean to get that victory tomorrow?”
Lowry gave an untypically short answer which began: “It’s the reason I get up in the morning ...”
The question addressed the elephant in the room by gently patting its long trunk. Lowry is one of the greatest Irish golfers there has ever been, one of only six players from this island to have won a Major; on any given week, like the one just gone at the Travelers Championship, he’s liable to pop up on the leaderboard at a PGA Tour event and put himself in a challenging position.
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But in the 17 years since he won the Irish Open as an amateur, Lowry has won just seven events from close to 500 tournament appearances worldwide. One of those wins was in partnership with Rory McIlroy. For a player of his talent, is that enough?
This has been an excruciating season of near misses. In Dubai, Lowry double-bogeyed the last hole in the final round and lost by two strokes. His bunker shot from the back of the 18th caught a slope, like it had landed on the head of a snake in the old board game, and slid into the hazard. “It happens to the best of them,” said Andrew Coltart in the Sky Sports commentary, fumbling for a word of consolation.
But the Cognizant Classic at PGA National, less than two months later, was infinitely more painful. Lowry led by three shots with three holes to play on Sunday and committed two double-bogeys. For 69 holes he was +9.85 in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking and for the closing holes he was -4.35. Essentially, he lost control.
“That’s a semi-socket,” said Wayne Riley, the Sky Sports on-course commentator after Lowry’s ball splashed into the hazard on the 16th. On the next hole, a treacherous par-3, he mishit his tee shot again. “You can’t believe how far right that is,” said Riley after Lowry’s 7-iron crash-landed in the lake miles short of its target.
The TV sound boom on the tee box picked up Lowry’s reaction just after he struck the shot. It wasn’t a shout of anger or exasperation, just a soft, plaintive, “Jesus Christ”.
“I said to Darren [Reynolds, his recently sacked caddie], how do I feel like this now when I went through what I did last September in Bethpage [where his half point in the singles retained the Ryder Cup for Europe] and got through that fine,” said Lowry afterwards. “I just couldn’t feel the club face the last three holes after my tee shot on 16.”
For a professional golfer, it must have felt like a whole-body concussion.
In the press conference afterwards, Lowry was asked if there had been “scar tissue” from the 2022 event at the same course where he lost by a shot and Lowry made a critical distinction.
“No, because I was beaten that day,” he said. “I hit all the shots that day and got beaten ... But I beat myself today.”
In golf, that has always been the bloodiest battle. Being runover by the field or being undressed by the course are common ways to lose, but if your mind whispers that you cannot win, that is a haunting conversation. Is that where Lowry finds himself now?
There are many ways to finish second. When Lowry was runner-up at the Truist Championship last season he bogeyed two of the last three holes. But when he went toe-to-toe with Rory McIlroy in the final group at the AT&T at Pebble Beach at the beginning of 2025, he played the last eight holes in five under par.
Winning in professional golf is brutally hard. Between the different exemption categories about 180 players teed it up on the PGA Tour last year. Of the more than 60 million golfers worldwide, these players represent the ultimate, pointiest tip of the pyramid.
That small elite is heavily stratified, though. The numbers keep rolling, like the ticker tape on the Bloomberg channel. Lowry went into the US PGA Championship 13 months ago at number 10 in the world rankings and came out of the US Open last week ranked number 45, his lowest ranking in more than two years. The calculating and recalculating never stops. Golf is always judging.
So, look at it this way: there were 37 different winners on the PGA Tour last year, and at least 22 of them were not better players than Lowry. You can argue the toss about Russell Henley or Sepp Straka or maybe Brian Harman, but in straight matchplay you would back Lowry against any of those players.
Ben Griffin won three times last year. If Griffin somehow lined up against Lowry in a Ryder Cup singles match, who would you fancy? Lowry would eat him for breakfast.
After he missed the cut at the US Open, Lowry split from Darren Reynolds, his caddie of the last three-and-a-half years, and asked Dermot Byrne to carry his bag at the Travelers Championship. They had been a partnership for the first 10 years of Lowry’s professional career, and maybe they will get back together now. After Lowry shot a terrific 64 on Saturday, he said that Byrne had given him “a bit of confidence” on the course.
But nobody would suggest that switching up the caddie is the cure. Lowry says he has been doing “a bit of work” with Bob Rotella, the pre-eminent sports psychologist in golf, who has helped McIlroy and Pádraig Harrington, among scores of others.
“But it’s hard,” Lowry said at the US PGA in May. “It’s not as straightforward as going and speaking to someone and getting it out and resetting. It’s just not that easy.”
He still has time. He still has the game. He’s still ambitious. He’s not coasting. He still wants it.
Does he want it too much? Only he knows.
