Lowry’s British Open win caps off big year in majors

Portrush, Northern Ireland — Winning the British Open didn’t sink in right away for Shane Lowry. It apparently didn’t take long. A celebration that began on the 18th fairway of Royal Portrush extended well into the night in Dublin. The European Tour posted a video on Twitter of Lowry, still dressed in all black from his final round with his cap flipped back. He was holding the claret jug in his right hand and a beer in his left as he belted out “The Fields of Athenry,” an Irish folk ballad that has become popular for Irish sports fans.

It might as well have been a celebration for all the majors this year.

Nothing could top Tiger Woods in the Masters, which dwarfed an otherwise four-month stretch of compelling outcomes.

Brooks Koepka had a major season not seen since before Woods began having surgeries, and the run is not over. He joined Woods as the only back-to-back PGA Championship winners in stroke play. He had chances in the final hour at the Masters and U.S. Open. And he was three strokes behind going into the weekend at the British Open, where he wound up in a distant tie for fourth.

Thanks to the PGA Championship moving from August to May, all Koepka has done in the last 12 months is win two majors, finish runner-up in two others and tie for fourth. Along the way, he joined some elite company. Koepka, Woods, Jordan Spieth and Jack Nicklaus are the only players to finish no worse than fourth in all four majors in the same year.

“This week is disappointing, but the rest of them ... it’s been great,” Koepka said Sunday. “I’m not going to lie. It’s been fun.”

Lowry and Gary Woodland were first-time major champions, making it five straight years of at least two players winning majors for the first time.

Their victories were special in their own right.

Already popular with his peers, Woodland won over golf fans around the world with his gracious support of Amy Bockerstette, the 20-year-old with Down syndrome who played one hole with him in the Phoenix Open pro-am and made par from a bunker on the 16th hole. She also inspired him with three words that he kept thinking about in the final round of the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach: “You got this.”

Lowry wrote the perfect ending to the return of the British Open to Northern Ireland after 68 years. Sure, the focus of a sellout crowd at Royal Portrush was on Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell and Darren Clarke at the start. But as Lowry so beautifully and simply said when his name was on the claret jug, “Everyone knows we’re all one country when it comes to golf.”