Golf

Shane Lowry returns to world’s top-50 after Bay Hill showing

Rory McIlroy getting ready to play The Players for 14th time and is well aware of the demands of TPC Sawgrass

Ireland's Shane Lowry hitting a tee shot on the ninth hole during his final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill golf course in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday. Photograph: Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
Ireland's Shane Lowry hitting a tee shot on the ninth hole during his final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill golf course in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday. Photograph: Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
Philip Reid
Mon Mar 11 2024 - 18:18

It’s not all about the greenbacks even when a sizeable pay-day of $1.5 million comes your way after a third-place finish. For Shane Lowry the benefits of his season’s best performance in the Arnold Palmer Invitational went beyond the pure monetary rewards as he returned to the world’s top-50 in 37th place in the official rankings and also leapfrogged his way up the FedEx Cup standings into 30th position.

There’s a long way to go yet in the PGA Tour season but the significance of getting into the top 30 on the FedEx Cup standings is that it would earn the Offaly man a ticket to the season-ending Tour Championship, which he has not yet managed to make. He has moved into a position to achieve that goal.

More immediately Lowry heads into this week’s The Players at Sawgrass – with its mammoth $25 million purse – playing the best golf he has played in a long time. Indeed the last time he managed top-fives in back-to-back weeks was in 2022 when he followed a tied-third place finish in the Masters with an identical result in the RBC Heritage.

“Some well-needed FedEx Cup points,” admitted Lowry of his result at Bay Hill, where he got a closer view than anyone of the masterclass exhibited by winner Scottie Scheffler in the final round.

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Lowry’s upward trajectory in the different standings has come on the back of excellent form, contending in both the Cognizant Classic and the Arnold Palmer Invitational (where he entered the final round of each tournament with a share of the lead) and he will seek to maintain that momentum heading into The Players where his best finish was tied-eighth in 2021.

Scottie Scheffler of the US hugging his father Scott after winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill golf course. Photograph: Brennan Asplen/Getty Images
Scottie Scheffler of the US hugging his father Scott after winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill golf course. Photograph: Brennan Asplen/Getty Images

At Bay Hill, Lowry’s bid for glory – and a first win on the PGA Tour since the 2019 Open and a first win anywhere since his BMW PGA Championship success at Wentworth in 2022 – came undone straight out of the blocks with bogeys on his opening two holes. “I was a little shaken,” he would later admit, but it was to Lowry’s credit that he refocused and finished strongly for solo third.

Of Scheffler’s performance, Lowry added: “There’s probably only a couple of players in the world that can live with him playing like that. I’m not sure I’m one of them ... he showed why he’s world number one!”

Lowry promised to “sit down and reflect” over the next couple of days but remains very much in game mode as he moves straight on to The Players with a spring in his step, followed next week by an onwards trip to Singapore on the DP World Tour as part of his scheduling ahead of next month’s Masters.

Of performing well at Palm Beaches and Bay Hill the past two weeks and looking ahead to Sawgrass, Lowry observed: “I play tough golf courses well, [where] you just have to roll with the punches and keep going and keep fighting as hard as you can, and see where it leaves you at the end of the day. For me [in Bay Hill] it was third place. Hopefully next week I go a couple better.”

Lowry is one of three Irish players in the field at Sawgrass along with Rory McIlroy and Séamus Power.

Rory McIlroy after hitting an approach shot on the first hole during his final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Photograph: Brennan Asplen/Getty Images
Rory McIlroy after hitting an approach shot on the first hole during his final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Photograph: Brennan Asplen/Getty Images

McIlroy’s season stateside has yet to ignite. In four tournaments to date he has yet to make a top-20 finish – 21st-21st-24th-66th – on the PGA Tour since his win in the Dubai Desert Classic on the DP World Tour back in January.

The tournament statistics from Bay Hill affirmed McIlroy’s wellbeing with the driver in hand: he was first in driving distance (averaging 321 yards with a longest drive of 365 yards) while he ranked second in strokes gained off-the-tee. However, he only ranked 40th in the field for greens hit in regulation.

This will be McIlroy’s 14th time playing in The Players (he won in 2019 and had three successive top-10s between 2013 and 2015) and is only too aware of the demands of TPC Sawgrass. “I’m super comfortable with how I’m hitting it off the tee. If you can get the ball in play there then I think that’s half the battle. But then you’ve got very small, demanding greens that you got to hit on the right levels, and you have to be pretty precise with your approach play as well. I guess for me, in my head at the minute, it’s all about the approach play because that’s the thing that I’m struggling with. I’ve got three days to try to figure it out and get some good work in.”

McIlroy is in one of the feature groups already named for television coverage at Sawgrass, in a group alongside Viktor Hovland and Jordan Spieth.

Philip Reid

Philip Reid

Philip Reid is Golf Correspondent of The Irish Times