GOLF IRISH OPEN: LITTLE THINGS can make all the difference. For almost six hours, Shane Lowry had battled the links, the elements and a dogged opponent and, as he walked off the 18th green having missed a five-foot birdie putt on the final hole of regulation that would have won him the 3 Irish Open at Baltray yesterday, he spied a familiar face. All was not lost.

Rory McIlroy, a team-mate in a previous life on Irish teams that had won European championships, was by the greenside.

He’d raced from the clubhouse, without raingear, to be there for what he hoped would be Lowry’s moment of triumph. It wasn’t to be, not that time. With the rain soaking him, McIlroy grabbed Lowry’s hand and pulled him in close.

McIlroy whispered to him. “You’ve still got this, you’re still going to win this . . . . believe!”

Lowry believed okay. He believed in his own ability from the time, shortly after 11.30am, that his first tee shot on the windswept link was pulled into the left rough. He resolutely went on to save his par.

And on the second, when he again found rough, Lowry continued to believe. He again found par. It was a day for digging deep; and Lowry, despite taking a step into the unknown, showed his resolve and his ability on a day when many tough questions were asked.

Although a number of players threatened to gatecrash the party, the final threeball – a group that contained Lowry, England’s Robert Rock and Sweden’s Stefan Edfors – kept the real quest for the title to themselves.

For a time, Edfors, the only one of the trio with a European Tour win on tour to his name, albeit going back to a stellar season in 2006 when he won three times, looked as if his experience would tell as he reduced the lead which Lowry and Rock held at the start to just one. But it was not to be; and, instead, the duel amidst the sand hills developed into a straight shoot-out between Lowry, the amateur, and Rock, a seasoned professional from the English midlands still chasing a maiden win.

Lowry had claimed the initiative with a birdie on the Par 5 third, where he hit his approach to 10 feet and just left his eagle putt on the lip. However, having made a good par save on the eighth despite pulling his drive into the left rough, Ireland’s top amateur had a tough spell mid-round with dropped shots on the ninth and the 11th where he came up short of the green in both instances. Were cracks appearing? We wondered. And learnt very quickly that those bogeys were mere blips along the way to what would prove to be the greatest journey of Lowry’s young life.

Indeed, when Rock bogeyed the 12th, overshooting the green with his approach, it enabled Lowry to reduce the gap that had grown to two to just one stroke. Then, Lowry took the initiative again, birdieing the 14th – from six feet – and the 16th, from nine feet. As the roars reverberated around the course, and a sense of history led to giddiness in the huge galleries who had adopted a new sporting son, Rock somehow managed to quieten expectations with a 15-footer for birdie on the Par 3 17th that again left them locked together.

The 18th hole, a Par 5 with danger down the right and fairway bunkers down the left, was to become familiar terrain for Lowry and Rock. On their first visit, in regulation, Lowry had a six-foot putt for birdie which would have given him victory. He missed, and that 71st shot of his day left him locked with Rock – who also parred the last – on the 271 mark.

It was at this point that Lowry got his words of encouragement from McIlroy, but the sudden death play-off – where men find what lies within them – proved to be an absorbing affair. On the first tie hole, Lowry’s tee shot found the face of a bunker but he somehow contrived to find a par. When Rock’s 10-footer for birdie to win failed to drop, they were carted back to the tee.

This time, Lowry – producing a spectacular three-wood approach of 270 yards to inside 10 feet – seemed to have control of his own destiny, with Rock in a greenside bunker in two. Of that three-wood, a shot that deserved to win any title, Lowry remarked: “It was perfect, a hard three-wood that came in off the left-handside of the left bunker, caught the pitch perfectly and rolled in (towards the hole).”

Unfortunately for him, he failed to make the eagle putt as the expected break never materialised in the putt. The hole was halved in birdies, Rock making a superb up and down from the trap.

Onwards they went, back down the 18th for a third time in the play-off. And the crowds, drenched by the rain, lined the fairways and packed the grandstands. This time, they were to get their champion. Both Lowry and Rock pushed their drives right, finishing on a path which was an integral part of the course. Both laid up. Lowry found the green, 20 feet from the flag; Rock’s approach ran over the back. The Englishman tried to hole his chip, but ran it seven feet past. Lowry’s birdie attempt finished 12 inches from the hole. When Rock missed his par putt, all that was left for Lowry was to tap home the shortest and sweetest putt of his life.

“You can’t describe what I am feeling at this minute. I’m shocked more than anything else. I came into this week, and I would have been happy enough to make the cut. Then, when I shot 62 on Friday, I thought, ‘right, this is my week. I can win’. You know, I still can’t believe it.”

His life has changed, he can start believing.