Tommy Fleetwood’s attempt flew twice as high and hardly drifted. You can’t spell Lowry without “low,” and that trajectory is part of the story of how a handsy Irishman with a long and flowing old-school action outlasted an Englishman with a more modern, controlled move in the wet crosswinds off the Irish Sea.

“Lowry’s rhythm hasn’t wavered once, it’s beautiful,” said David Leadbetter walking in full waterproof gear, doing his best to keep his Sky Sports microphone dry while off air. “Both of these players have such wonderful short games, delicate, and that’s what a lot of it comes down to on a day like today.”

Not one golfer who teed off in the afternoon would finish their round under par.

The largest throng of reporters and photographers followed the final group, of course, wearing paths through the fescue and thorn berries like rabbits, but thanks to the firm directions of lead hole marshal Bernie McGuire, TV viewers hopefully didn’t see much of us. Besides keeping the notebook dry, you see, staying out of the way is the name of the game.

RELATED: How ‘the talented little fat lad with glasses’ became an Open champion

Kneeling to avoid the ire of the crowd, you hear from over your shoulder at the seventh, “Ah no, take the feckin’ putter, Shane boy.” Lowry is just a few paces short of the par-5 green in two and holding a wedge, in almost the same exact spot where he failed to make birdie in Saturday’s third round. He lobs it again—unnecessarily, at least one fan would say—but this time cleanly and converts the bird. Off tight links turf and with a major championship on the line, words can’t express how good a putter looked from there. Hugo Boss is the sponsor of every free hat at this Open, and that shot selection certainly was, too.

Lowry marches to the eighth tee 18 under with a six-stroke lead. The heaviest rains are about to unfurl, and along with them some bogeys, but it’s OK. As the crowd moves forward, a young man on behalf of the R&A remains behind to remove the flag from the stick, rolling it and tucking it away in a backpack. Like Lowry, he’s just counting down the holes.

Jan Kruger/R&A Lowry acknowledges the crowd on the fourth hole during Sunday’s final round.

The crowd is so overwhelmingly for Lowry—carrying him forward while even super-fit Fleetwood is starting to look drained—that it’s hard to tell where his shots are ending up. On blind approach shots (of which there are more than normal in the flat light), there’s just no telling where a Lowry approach has finished. Ten feet, 40 feet and even greenside rough tend to all generate the same, soccer-stadium reaction.

“C’mon Sh-yane! Go Sh-yane! Our boy is gannae dew it!”

Back to the 16th. It’s a thin light blue line that keeps the beer and rain-soaked crowds from enveloping Lowry. Light blue, you see, is the color of the rain jackets the marshals have been issued.

“The last three or four holes were kind of a bit of a procession for Shane, and he did great,” Fleetwood would say after it was over. As for the very beginning, that was Fleetwood’s chance. “The first hole, if you look at it, I have six or seven feet for birdie, [Lowry] has six or seven feet for bogey. I hole, he misses, and we’ve got a one-shot gap.”

But that’s not what happened. It was exactly the opposite; Lowry making and Fleetwood missing. “That settled me an awful lot,” Lowry said, who then held control the whole way in to become the winner of the 148th Open Championship.

Although it’s not really the 148th Open, it’s the 147th. The first “championship” held at Prestwick in 1860 wasn’t open to amateurs, only professionals, so it wasn’t technically an “Open.” But that little fact matters not one bit to Shane Lowry or the roughly 40,000 spectators pouring out the exit in driving rain. An Irishman won the Open in Northern Ireland.

The post The Open 2019: What you didn’t see on TV from Sunday at Royal Portrush appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Brian Wacker
PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — A year ago, Shane Lowry sat in his car after the opening round of the Open Championship at Carnoustie and cried. A day later, he missed the cut.

“Golf wasn’t my friend at the time,” he said Sunday night from Royal Portrush. “It was something that had become very stressful, and it was weighing on me, and I just didn’t like doing it.

“That just shows how fickle golf is. Golf is a weird sport, and you never know what’s around the corner. That’s why you need to remind yourself, and you need other people there to remind you. You need to fight through the bad times.”

Walking up the 72nd hole of the 148th Open, a few hours north of where Lowry is from in Clara County, Offaly, a once-unimaginable scene in these previously troubled parts unfolded, with tricolor Irish flags waving in the crowd and chants of “Ole, Ole Ole Ole!” The only tears for Lowry on this day were of joy.

All week long, Lowry had talked about embracing the enormity of the moment, rather than shying away from it. If there was pressure, it meant that something good could happen. Despite the heavy burden of a nation across his broad shoulders, and the slog of a wet and windy final round, he cruised to a six-stroke win over Tommy Fleetwood to take home the claret jug and his first career major championship.

“It was amazing,” said Lowry, 32, after a one-over-par 72. “It’s hard to believe. It’s just hard to believe.”

Related: Shane Lowry delivers on years of promise

Not that long ago, it was hard to even imagine for Lowry.

Twelve months ago, after missing the cut in the Open for the fourth straight year, Lowry parted ways with caddie Dermot Byrne, ending their nine-year partnership. The split was painful but proved re-energizing for Lowry, who last September added veteran looper Bo Martin to his bag and in short order started to see improvement in his play.

When Martin took over, Lowry was ranked 86th in the world. In short order, he won the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in January, overcoming a blown four-stroke advantage going into the final day to hang on, then had top 10s at the RBC Heritage, PGA Championship and RBC Canadian Open.

Martin, who grew up 90 minutes south of Portrush in Ardglass, had caddied for a number of players, including Gary Murphy, Peter Lawrie, Alex Levy and Lucas Bjerregaard, and was contemplating a career change when Lowry’s coach, Neil Manchip, called him last fall.

“I met him for a coffee and breakfast in Dublin,” Martin said. “He said, ‘Let’s do Portugal and see how it goes.’ He finished sixth, and we kept going. I said this is what I’m gonna do. This guy is a good player.”

It turned out that Lowry, who had won the Irish Open in a playoff as an amateur in 2009, just needed some convincing. Never mind that he had won in Portugal in 2012, at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in 2015 and led by four shots going into the final round of the 2016 U.S. Open. His runner-up at Oakmont was tough to get over, given that he trailed by one through the first 12 holes in the final round only to make three straight bogeys on Nos. 14, 15 and 16 to finish second.

Three years later in Abu Dhabi in January, he nearly suffered the same fate before coming out on top. Still, a missed cut at the Masters led to a four-hour chat with Manchip and Martin the next week. It was a steady rise from there, with three straight finishes in the top eight.

Then there was the Open and a trip to Bushmills with his caddie and his coach on the eve of the championship, the first Open played in Northern Ireland in 68 years.

“I was quite nervous and anxious Wednesday evening, and we went for that chat,” Lowry said. “You come up here, and I suppose the other lads would have had it as well, G-Mac [Graeme McDowell] and the lads. The last thing you want to do is come up here and miss the cut. … And that was kind of in my mind. I wanted to play at least four days and wanted to put up a good show for myself.

“It really settled me down. I left the Bushmills Inn the other night, and I really felt like I could go out and perform to the best of my ability the next day.”

Especially on Sunday.

After an impressive bogey save following a worm burner off the opening tee, Lowry made three birdies in a four-hole stretch from Nos. 4 to 7 to pad his lead to six. Bad weather and bogeys on three of his next four holes around the turn followed, but it helped that everyone else around him was struggling in the conditions, too.

It was about what Lowry didn’t do that proved just as pivotal.

“When he holed that putt for bogey at the first, he probably went to the second tee feeling like he won the first hole,” Padraig Harrington said. “When you look back, he was never in trouble. He made some bogeys, but he never looked like he was taking any more than a bogey out there. He’s got a strong game for these conditions.”

And a strong head, too.

“He played really well,” Fleetwood said. “He hit the right shots. Didn’t always hit great shots. It was very difficult out there. Never lost control of himself. He made some key putts at key times, even down to the first hole, you know. The first hole, if you look at it, I have six or seven feet for birdie, six or seven feet for bogey, I hole, he misses, and we’ve got a one-shot gap, and that’s only after one hole.

“He did better in those moments than I did today.”

And better than the last time Lowry was in the same position at Oakmont three years ago. That day, Lowry had already visualized himself winning before even teeing off. It wasn’t long before things went sideways and he started to doing everything too quickly. “That’s what happens when you play a few bad holes,” he’d said then. “They’re kind of over before you know it.”

As Lowry hoisted the claret jug on Sunday night, things were just getting started.

“He doesn’t have to prove to anybody he’s a good player,” Martin said. “But he proved it to himself how good he was today.”

The post The Open 2019: How a caddie switch helped Shane Lowry emerge from a mid-career slump appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.