Week of highs, lows for Lowry
One day you’re good enough to beat Rory McIlroy on a World Golf Championship stage. A few days later, you take a back seat to Darron Stiles at a place called Mayacoo Lakes Country Club.
Welcome to the jampacked, outrageously talented world of professional golf, Shane Lowry.
The personable Irishman, 25, still riding a wave of momentum from beating McIlroy and Carl Pettersson in the Accenture Match Play Championship, came one agonizing shot shy of a possible spot in this week’s Honda Classic in Palm Beach Gardens. Taking on the challenge of a Monday qualifier at Mayacoo, Lowry shot 67 when he needed to shoot 66 to at least get into a playoff.
Stiles was among four who shot that 5-under total, advancing along with Vaughn Taylor, Jamie Donaldson and Alex Noren. Like Lowry, Donaldson and Noren were teeing it up in the Monday qualifier just a few days removed from their Match Play appearances.
Donaldson, an Englishman, lost to Denmark’s Thorbjorn Olesen, in Round1, while Noren pounded Dustin Johnson, 6 and 4, before being ousted in Round 2 by Graeme McDowell on the 20th hole.
NowTaylor may not have been coming from a WGC affair, but he deserves a round of applause for another sterling effort. For a second straight year, Taylor came from outside the borders of America to fly to Florida Sunday night and then tee it up successfully the next morning. They don’t give FedEx Cup points for that at Camp Ponte Vedra, but you sure do deserve a lot of respect.
Last year, Taylor was joint 16th in the Mayakoba Golf Classic in Mexico, flew to Florida Sunday night, then breezed through the Monday qualifier the next day. He went on to finish T-18 in the Honda Classic.
Not eligible for the Accenture Match Play Championship and with no opposite-field Mayakoba to enter this year, Taylor went to Panama and finished T-9 in the Web.com Tour season opener. Getting back to Florida in time to make it through the Honda Monday qualifier? No worries; he’s got this down to a science, it seems.
For Donaldson and Noren, making it into the Honda field is a bonus, because they otherwise would have been sitting around, just waiting for next week’s WGC-Cadillac Championship at Doral. Not a bad little stretch for them now — a WGC, Honda, then another WGC. Unfortunately, Lowry needed to get into the Honda for a chance to jump up his world ranking (62nd) to earn a spot into the Cadillac Championship at Doral. Not that he’s completely shut out; he does have a spot in the Puerto Rico Open opposite the Cadillac, which is important in that the next significant deadline of note is April 1. On that day, anyone not otherwise qualified who is inside the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking will earn a Masters spot.