Lowry blitzes his way to first major triumph
The last man standing in thick sheets of rain, Shane Lowry raised his arms and turned in disbelief to the skies above that had wreaked such biblical carnage all afternoon as chants of his name echoed from the 18th green at Portrush to Clara and across all corners of Ireland.
After so ruthlessly tearing through a still and sunny Portrush on Saturday to take a four-shot lead into the final round, the bearded son of County Offaly withstood the tidal weather to shoot a one-over-par 72 and win The Open Championship by an ultimately comfortable six-shots.
On an afternoon where the entire field was battered by a deluge befitting the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the charge of Tommy Fleetwood endured alongside him in the final group, lingers of doubt remained for Lowry who spent the eve of the tournament searching for answers at the nearby Bushmills Inn with his swing coach.
But as his birdie-putt trickled into the hole on the 16th - his first in almost two hours – all those little inklings of doubt were eradicated as he punched cathartically through the fog, the road to victory was finally cleared.
The first Irishman to win an Open Championship on the Emerald Isle, they serenaded him down the 18th to a howl of ‘oles’ that even the winds couldn’t subdue. After 68 years without an Open here, the script could barely have worn a more romantic ending as the 32-year-old banished the demons of squandering a lead by the same margin going into the final round of the US Open three years ago.
As he walked down 18, he finally allowed the wall of sound and all the emotions to seep in, banging his hand against his heart and slinging the arm of his caddie, Bo Martin, over his shoulder. The rapturous amphitheatre surrounding the 18th green pushed back against the grey skies and will continue to do so long after night has fallen and into the bleary hours of the morning.
“It was just incredible to walk down 18,” he said giddily in his champion’s press conference. ”The crowd is going wild. Singing “Olé, Olé. I just couldn’t believe it was happening to me. It’s an incredible feeling sitting here with the trophy in front of me. Look at the names on it. It’s not going to sink in for a couple of days.”
It was a fantastic display of resilience from Lowry, who arrived on the first tee in the eye of a late afternoon storm, cheeks burned red by the wind, and still understandably stricken with nerves. As the raindrops lined his clubface, the intensity of the stage threatened to become overwhelming. He scythed his tee-shot low and left, saved only a few yards from the boundary rope and, by the time he’d hacked himself from the greenside bunker, he stared down the barrel of a double-bogey.
In a round played over five hours, rarely can one putt – and a bogey putt at that – on the very first hole be pinpointed as the stroke that won an Open Championship. But as his rattled through the bow of the green and into the back of the hole, and Fleetwood’s birdie chance drooped low, a potential one-shot lead instead stood at three. The cushion remained, any promise of collapse was dragged back from the precipice and the gap would never close tighter.
“I hit a ropy tee shot on the first,” he said. “Then you’re standing on the first green, Tommy has a great chance of birdie and I’m putting for bogey from eight feet. There’s a potential three-shot swing. He misses, I make, and there’s only one shot. That settled me an awful lot.”
Starting some seven shots behind, Brooks Koepka, dressed in the beaming yellow of the Maillot jaune, was washed from contention almost immediately as four grisly bogeys dropped him to ten shots off the lead. Rickie Fowler recovered from a double-bogey start to mount a charge while Danny Willett stayed true to his rehabilitated vein of form. But as the droplets turned to downpour and the winds turned to gales, everything ceased to be of relevance beyond the final group.
Three birdies in four holes starting on the fourth hauled Lowry to 18-under-par – one shy of Tiger Woods’ record-winning Open Championship score – and the crowd launched into a huddled Poznan behind the green, sidling against one another in transparent blue bin-bags in desperation of warmth. A warmth that died so quickly it felt as though it had forgotten to exist in the first place. The storms of Thursday and Friday paled into drizzle by comparison.
The rain fell in puddles, the sky rumbled in the angriest groans of grey as the wind wailed in high-pitch shrieks. All around the course, the tents, marquees and tinny huts rattled a backing track like exhausted wind-chimes. Of the last 20 players to begin their final round, they made the turn in a collective 31-overpar.
Arrested by a far-flung hook, Fleetwood’s quest to end a 27-year English drought of the Claret Jug was stranded by a mire of pars and ultimately met a cruel end. Both players dropped shots on the eighth, Lowry slipped another on the sodden ninth as the entire field shifted backwards in unity.
On the 10th, with both players scrambling from the basins surrounding every green, Lowry holed a sloping six-footer to save par. Moments later, Fleetwood’s shorter par-putt stuck to the sodden green and died to the left of the hole. With eight to play, the chasm between them returned to six.
But then, quietly, it drifted and so the nerves jangled. Down to five after a bogey on 11. Then to four as Fleetwood birdied the par-5 fifth. Only on the 14th, as Fleetwood shanked his way out of a bunker en route to a double bogey, did Lowry’s lead finally feel gilded by safety. When that birdie putt on 16 fell, the celebrations that had been bubbling all day truly erupted. And, after the deathly silence that proceeded Lowry’s final putt, there’s no telling when they will stop.