Shane Lowry didn’t have much fun Saturday at Royal Troon.
Leading The Open by two shots when he teed off, Lowry proceeded to shoot 6-over 77, playing his final 11 holes in 7 over and without a birdie to plummet to 1 under. Sure, he’s still just four shots back of new leader Billy Horschel, but Lowry, battered and bruised by wind and rain that ramped up just in time for the lead groups, still hadn’t gotten his bearings by the time he stepped up to the mic.
“There’s no doubt I’m going to go out there tomorrow thinking I can win the tournament, but it’s just hard right now,” Lowry said. “You have to give me a bit of leeway. Ten minutes ago, I had to putt for par on the 18th green, and I’m here talking to you guys now trying to figure out how I shot 77 in my own head. This game is just hard, and now you feel how hard it was for playing well the first two days in those conditions.
“Honestly, it was brutal.”
Perhaps no shot summed up the difficulty of the day than Lowry hitting driver off the tee at the 238-yard, par-3 17th hole, which Si Woo Kim had aced several hours earlier with a 3-iron. Lowry still had 31 yards from a front bunker for his second shot.
“Playing a par-3 hitting drivers is not much crack,” Lowry said. “Roll the ball back, huh? Yeah.”
Lowry’s frustrations continued.
“You’d have to question why there wasn’t a couple of tees put forward today, to be honest,” said Lowry, who, like much of the field come Saturday evening, couldn’t get home in two at Nos. 11 and 15, though he hit a poor approach at the former.
“I think 15 and 17 – like 15 is 500 yards playing into that wind. … They keep trying to make holes longer, yet the best hole in this course is about 100 yards.”
Never mind conditions were much easier in the morning; the first 10 groups averaged 36.55 on the back nine, which played into the wind Saturday after playing downwind the first two rounds, while the last 10 groups, including Lowry’s final pairing, averaged 38.05. Sam Burns, Adam Scott, Justin Thomas and a few others shot 4 under or better early to rocket up the leaderboard, just in time before Mother Nature decided to smack Lowry and Co. in the face.
There was no follow-up question.
Lowry was off the hook, and off to decompress.