A 19 Year Old Shane Lowry
The first time I ever met Shane Lowry was on a sunny evening in 2006. He was carrying his clubs through the front door of our house.
My parents had a Bed & Breakfast in Wicklow and Shane was 19, staying in our house with his mate Simon Ward while they played The Irish Close Amateur Championship at The European Club (soon to be Brittas Bay Club), 15 minutes from our house. “Irish Close” as opposed to “Irish Open” means that the tournament is “closed” to players not from Ireland as opposed to being “open” to the world.
“We played 9 holes today but the weather was too good so we just went to the beach instead of playing the back 9” he joked.
For those who know it, The European is right beside one of the most beautiful beaches on Ireland’s east coast.
I was 13 and was a golf nut. My parents had recently got me one of those golf nets that I set up in my garden. I was hitting a few shots into the net later that evening when I hit a pitching wedge too high over the net, across the road and into the field opposite our house. I shit myself, but then I heard laughing from behind me. Shane’s head was poking out the window of his bedroom upstairs in the house. He watched me hit this shot over the net and saw the panic written all over my body.
“I’ll come down and give you a lesson.”
Himself, Simon Ward and myself spent the evening chipping balls and playing football in our back garden. The lads were just 2 normal Irish young lads who loved sport. I was telling them how I was a big fan of Yeovil Town - I had the jersey and everything at the time (don’t ask). They understandably looked at me like I had 2 heads.
My Dad and I said to them, “we must come out and watch you this week” to which they replied, “nah don’t bother watching us. Watch this young lad called Rory McIlroy, he’s going to be the European Tiger Woods”. Not sure whatever happened to that guy.
Shane went on to tell us how he had been disqualified twice earlier that summer in a couple of big amateur events.
The first when he posted a best of the day 74 to take the clubhouse lead early in the third round of the Irish Amateur Open at Portmarnock. But forgot to sign his scorecard - almost four weeks to the day since he made a similar mistake in the West of Ireland Championship.
He signed for a wrong score in the second round at Rosses Point when he looked certain to win the silver medal as leading qualifier in his first senior championship appearance after a best of the week 66. He shook his head as he talked to us as if to say, “I’m some eejit”. Clearly he was underselling himself when talking about Rory, Shane was a proper player himself.
Shane got knocked out in the quarter finals that week but Simon, the other guy staying with us, got to the final where he was set to face this young McIlroy fella who everyone was talking about.
Rory The Prodigy
I remember seeing Simon at breakfast the morning of the final in the dining room of our house. His knee was bouncing nervously as he sipped his coffee.
Myself and a group of mates headed out to The European to watch the final where we caught up with Rory and Simon on the 7th fairway. Shane was caddying for Simon. Rory hit his approach shot to the green and wandered over to me in my Yeovil jersey, “so you’re the Yeovil boy Simon was talking about?” he says in his teenage Nordy twang.
The 16 year old Rory went on to win that match on the 16th, holing a monster putt from across the green.
From that moment I became pretty obsessed with following the lads progress through the ranks - it was easy to get newspaper clippings of Rory, he was getting written about pretty often. My Mam or Dad would come home with the back pages taken out of the sports papers with stuff about Rory and I’d read them in bed.
We all know what Rory has gone on to do which is just incredible but Shane’s career has been remarkable in a different way.
The career nobody else has had
Has Shane actually lived the dream career? Here we have a player who’s spent the majority of his career hovering around 30-70 in the world but has had the highest highs you could possibly imagine.
Last week’s win at the Irish Open by a record 11 shots drove that point home for me.
Shane has had such an incredible career in the most unique way. He’s spent the majority of his career in and around the top 50 in the world. He has 8 professional wins in total but basically all of his wins have been the stuff of dreams.
He’s played in 3 Ryder Cups but hasn’t actually automatically qualified for any. He reached 10th in the world once but his career has been filled with the most incredible moments of any player at that level.
Of course, getting inside the top 100 in the world is absolutely elite, I’m not discounting that at all but look at other players who have spent a lot of time in or around the top 10 in the world.
Take Patrick Cantlay as an example. One of the most consistent players of the last 5 years, getting to 3 in the world but his biggest moments came at wins at The BMW PGA Championship and The ZOZO. I’m not trying to knock The ZOZO but you get my point.
Viktor Hovland is one of golf’s greatest talents, destined for greatness out of college and he still might go on to win majors but wins at The Travelers or The Memorial are his biggest moments. Or even take one of Shane’s good mates Tommy Fleetwood. I think everyone loves Tommy and although he’s had good major finishes and had that brilliant breakthrough at the Tour Championship, his biggest moments have been good but not quite pinch me moments.
The biggest example that comes to mind of a player probably in a similar ballpark as Shane in terms of ability is Charles Howell III. CH3 as he’s known has 600+ starts on the PGA Tour, made $40+ million and his 3 biggest moments? 2018 RSM Classic, 2007 Nissan Open and 2002 Michelob Championship.
I don’t mean to discount any of these achievements, they are in the top 0.0001% of golfers to have ever played but it just shows how difficult it is for a player to produce their very best moments when all the stars align.
Then we have Shane Lowry.
Winning your home open as an amateur
By 2009, Rory had turned pro and was garnering all the attention but Shane was dominating the Irish amateur scene and got an invite to play in the Irish Open at Baltray that year (County Louth) and you probably know what happened there. A 2nd round 62 jolted him to the top of the leaderboard and to the front of every Irish sports fans attention, mostly for the first time. When he holed the winning putt as the rain lashed down on that 18th green against Robert Rock in a playoff in front of thousands of Irish fans suddenly Shane had experienced one of the most incredible feats any golfer could possibly dream of - winning your home open, as an amateur. Fairytale stuff. If he never went on to do anything else people would still be talking about that in 100 years.
But was that all he did?
The wins that never felt small
Vilamoura is a regular golf holiday destination for Irish people and Shane, after a couple of so so years on tour following his Irish Open win, holed his 2nd shot from the middle of the 11th fairway and went on to win by a shot over Ross Fisher. I remember watching Shane dance around with his then and now again caddie, Dermot Byrne. This was probably his lowest profile win.
His first win on The PGA Tour was not some Micky Mouse John Deere Classic. He hit what was voted the PGA Tour shot of the year on the last hole at the iconic Akron (where Tiger has won 8 times) to win a World Golf Championship event. At the time, WGC events were ranked alongside The Players as the biggest golf events outside of majors and he won the biggest one of the lot. This was the big time. The following year, he held a 4 shot lead going into the final round at the US Open at Oakmont where Dustin Johnson got the better of him.
Portrush 2019
2019 started with a win at a pretty big tournament on the DP World Tour at Abu Dhabi, a massive tournament in its own right but it was only a warm up for what was to come. The Open Championship was headed to the island of Ireland for the first time in 68 years. Shane apparently went for a coffee with his coach on the eve of the tournament. He was so nervous about wanting to produce a good performance in front of his own people. It was like he knew what was to come. After 2 impressive 67’s in the first 2 rounds Shane found himself right in the mix in front of a home crowd. Imagine what that must have felt like going out late in the day at The Open in Ireland on a weekend.
What did he do? He went out and shot a 63 that Saturday at Portrush. I’ll never forget watching that round. Of all the tournaments that he had ever played until that point, how did he manage to shoot a 63 in that situation? The whole country behind him. Imagine what that must have felt like. Every country has their sporting moments - for Irish sports fans, Portrush in 2019 was iconic. How he must have felt waking up that Sunday morning heading out to play is hard to imagine. If it was me, I would have been sick. I wouldn’t have been able to eat. But he did what he needed to do and won The Open. In Ireland. It doesn’t get any better than that surely.
Winning an Open at all would have been unbelievable. If he did it like Collin Morikawa at an empty Covid Open at Royal St. Georges would it have been great? Of course it would have but to do it on Irish soil in the way that he did in front of the home crowd. What are the odds of that?
The wins that came after
After the Open, his next win was at Wentworth, the flagship event on The DP World Tour. Again, it’s not like he picked up a win at a small event, he won the biggest event on the tour. That’s just par for the course for Shane.
You could argue the Zurich Classic at New Orleans was the lowest ranking win of his career but then you could also argue it’s one of the coolest things you could win on tour. He won playing alongside his best mate, Rory McIlroy. How bloody cool is that? I remember watching the clips of Rory and Shane singing Don’t Stop Believin’ on stage after the event. Even the small wins are speacial.
Holing the winning putt at The Ryder Cup
Ireland has a pretty strong connection with New York. There’s a lot of people that would make the case that Ireland helped build New York so a Ryder Cup held out on Long Island was always going to be special. Shane found himself 2 down with 4 holes to play against Russell Henley in the last singles. Europe were in the middle of throwing away one of the biggest leads going into a Sunday at the Ryder Cup and suddenly it looked like it was all coming down to Shane against Henley. He hit a beauty of an approach shot to 15 to get back to 1 down with 3 to play. He said afterwards he just wanted to get him to the last hole. After halves on 16 and 17 it became clear that if Shane could win the last hole, The Ryder Cup would be Europe’s. The biggest event in golf came down to how he could play the last hole.
He said to his caddie walking down the last fairway, “I have an opportunity to do something incredible here”. Imagine having the presence of mind to think like that. How many people in that moment would think in the complete opposite way? “Oh no, what if I mess up here?” It’s the measure of the man in that moment that he was able to get himself into the right headspace to see this as an opportunity, rather than something to be scared of. Can you teach that sort of mentality?
Henley could have taken the moment away from Shane on that 18th green but when he missed his birdie putt the moment was Shane’s. Here he was, 10 feet to win the Ryder Cup. Of course he holed it. His whole career is built on these moments. The uncontrolled jig he did on the 18th green fit the moment perfectly.
Irish Open 2026 - record margin
And then we have the Irish Open at Doonbeg. In 2026, Shane had a chance to win a couple of times before he got to Doonbeg. He was leading in Dubai in January before a double bogey on the final hole cost him. He had a similar experience around The Bear Trap at The Cognizant where he blew a pretty comfortable lead with 3 holes to go. Then he goes and wins The Irish Open by a record 11 shots. Of the 3 chances he had this year, he won the right one. This has happened too often in his career for it to be a coincidence.
Hole in ones
You may or may not know, his hole in one record is outrageous by way of the specific holes he’s achieved them. Here’s some holes on the list:
TPC Sawgrass, 17th
Augusta National, 16th
Augusta National, 6th
Pebble Beach, 7th
They’re the most iconic par 3’s in golf. How is that even possible?
Luck, or something more?
It’s remarkable how many times everything has lined up for Shane over the years. Professionals play somewhere between 25-30 times a year so over a 10-15 year career at their peak they might be lucky enough to play 300-400 times. Your wins and big moments could come at any of those weeks but for Shane, they’ve always seemed to happen at just the right time. I’m fascinated by the mental side of sport and life in general. How do things just work out for some people whereas things just go wrong for others. Sometimes there simply is an element of chance.
But when we try to observe a career like Shane’s objectively, is it just luck that he’s produced his biggest moments when the child in us would dream of? I certainly remember standing on the putting green in my local golf club as a 12 year old with “this putt to win The Ryder Cup for Europe” or “this putt to win the Open Championship or Irish Open”.
Shane has just imagined doing that. He’s done it for real.
Is that just luck?
I doubt it.
The Caddie’s Line
Shane won The Open at Royal Portrush in 2019. If you have never been, it is worth making the trip - one of the finest links courses in the world and the setting for one of the great sporting days in Irish history. Royal Portrush is part of the Northern Ireland trip we run at Roam Golf. If that sounds like your kind of thing, head to roam-golf.com.
The Read
Open by John Feinstein. The best book ever written about a major championship a full year inside the ropes following the players chasing The Open. If this piece has made you feel anything about what it means to win The Open or any major, this book will multiply that feeling tenfold. Great reading for any serious golf fan.