Shane Lowry Interview

Mister Sifter

Good read from the Sunday Indo about Shane Lowry and how he's adapting to life on tour...


Up where he belongs

Shane Lowry is still adjusting to his new life on the 'ruthless' European Tour, writes John O'Brien

Sunday September 27 2009

THEY have been shooting the breeze for a few minutes now. Shane Lowry, Dessie Dolan, Donal Molloy of Esker Hills and Lowry's manager, Conor Ridge.

The conversation turns to the European Tour qualifying school which started last week. "The greatest leveller in golf," Molloy says sombrely. The others nod. Even those who have never been there or teed up in a professional event know something of the wincing pain and mental torment Q-School regularly inflicts on those hopefuls who enter its domain.

From the golfer there comes a knowing, impish smile. If the shape of his life hadn't been so dramatically altered, he too would have been out there, among friends and golfers he'd barely heard of, competing for one of the handful of golden tickets to next year's Tour. If Lowry has his way, he'll never have to appreciate the sweat-inducing terror of what aspiring Tour players know as the torture chamber.

He'd been there last year, of course. Fetched up at The Oxfordshire north of London for the second qualifying stage. He was just 21, though, a kid looking for a small taste of the big time. He told himself if he reached the final stage he'd turn pro anyway and slog it out on the Challenge Tour for three or four years if he had to. He missed by three shots. No worries. He'd have the Walker Cup this year and another shot at Tour School. No point in being ready ahead of time.

Instead, he's sitting in his home golf club, enjoying the second half of a two-week break, observing the scores from Q-School, feeling blessed he dodged that bullet. He saw one golfer at The Oxfordshire on 31-over par and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Dolan talks about his friend, Colm Moriarty from Athlone, a raw, precocious talent that has yet to be fulfilled. Moriarty left the amateur ranks six years ago and still hasn't claimed his full Tour card. "He's too good a player not to be on Tour," Lowry says.

But as soon as the words leave his mouth, he knows they sound a touch trite. As good as Moriarty is, how many golfers could he say the same thing about? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? One hundred maybe? A hundred golfers who never got the break he did.

Today the Westmeath footballer has brought a group of promising kids from his school in Moate to play the course that made the Irish Open champion. The deputy principal of the school is Tom Lowry, Shane's uncle. Dolan explains that the kids had a choice of engagement: the ploughing championships in Athy or a round of golf at Esker Hills with the chance to snag a few words and a picture with its most famous son. The bus to Kildare left without them.

This is his life now. On Monday, he spent the day doing an interview and having pictures taken for Golf World magazine. On Tuesday, he was busy filming an ad for one of his sponsors, Three, and managed to squeeze in a lesson from his coach, Neil Manchip, in the process. Another of his sponsors, Teligence, is run by Fintan Shortall, a local man from Offaly, and when he is away he likes the sense of home that implies.

And he's hungry to get going again. Last week he played nine holes one day, 13 another and, with such a low level of activity, he's eager for a heavy dosage now. In the evening he'll head home and if his younger brother Alan is up for it, they'll head back to Esker Hills and get nine in before dark. If their father Brendan joins them, they'll play for a fiver and he knows he won't play a more competitive game all year.

Since he won the Irish Open in May he has played 12 tournaments without covering himself in glory or letting himself down. He's missed six cuts, the last two by a single shot, and for a golfer without the apprenticeship of Tour school or a few eye-openers on the Challenge circuit, it has been an acceptable start. "Every day I'm out there learning," he says. "Every week I'm there, every round, every hole I play, every shot I hit. I'm learning all the time."

Two weeks after Baltray he landed at the London Club in Kent for his first tournament as a professional and shot 78, embarrassed to have played so badly, relieved to be through the ordeal. The previous day he had been called into the media tent and found he was sandwiched between Graeme McDowell and Sergio Garcia. It seemed like the cruellest of inductions. Welcome to the Tour kid.

"It takes time to adapt. Most of the time I played as an amateur you'd have seven iron in your hand and you're going straight at the pin. Now I hit driver and have four iron left and you're happy to be in the middle of the green. It's so much harder to score. As an amateur, you can get away with bad shots. Shoot level par and you're top five. Shoot level par as a pro and you're lucky to be inside the top 100. It's fairly ruthless out there."

Ruthless. That's the thing, see. He remembers being on the back nine at Baltray on the final day on Sunday, feeling a twinge of sympathy for his playing partner, Robert Rock. His girlfriend Deirdre had tried to tell him about the stir he was creating back home but only now did it sink in. The huge galleries pressing in on either side, roaring his every shot, cheering again when his playing partners missed a putt or struck a wayward shot.

And, truth be told, a part of him felt for Rock and what it must have been like for the Englishman to play in such intimidating surroundings. "Must've been hard for him to play in that," he muses. "You would find that hard, wouldn't you? 30,000 people cheering against you. You miss a putt or hit a bad shot and they start cheering. It was mad, wasn't it?"

It was Shaper, as usual, who had put him right. Dave 'Shaper' Reynolds had been his caddy for two years, his friend for much longer, and knew instinctively how Lowry's mind was working. When the nerves threatened to eat him, Shaper knew what to say. "The other guys are just as nervous as you." And when Rock was beaten he knew how to put that into perspective too. "He's going to get your cheque," Shaper told him. "No need to feel sorry for him."

And now, more than four months on, Lowry watches Shaper drive from the first tee at Esker Hills and, later, their paths will cross again on the intersection of the seventh and ninth tees. Over two months since their working relationship ended, they will exchange easy banter on the golf course, but the golfer is eager for more than that. He wants to explain why he had to take the decision he did and how much it hurt, like he was chopping off one of his own limbs. It doesn't come easy, though.

Such grim irony. Shaper had tried to teach him how to be ruthless on the golf course. Now he was the victim of the most ruthless, unsentimental act of Lowry's life. It hurt because Shaper had helped him through his two best years as an amateur, carrying his bag often for no other reward than to see the young golfer fulfill his talent. Once Shaper had been part of a good Offaly football team and his swaggering confidence and Lowry's natural ability had been good bedfellows. Like Lowry's famous father and uncles, Shaper loved playing at a packed Croke Park. The adrenaline-inducing atmosphere of Baltray was tailor-made for him.

Tour life brought different demands. The low-rent days of Thursday and Friday on quiet, unfamiliar courses where a golfer's weekend and his chance of a decent cheque were on the line and the slow, dawning realisation that it was enough to have one of them struggling. Five tournaments in. Three missed cuts. He knew it was time to sever a limb.

"It was the right decision," says Lowry now. "It had to be made. But it was one of the toughest things I've ever had to do. I'm not sure we've really sat down and spoken about it properly yet. We will do. I knew I had to do it but I didn't really want to do it either, if you know what I mean. I was doing alright. I'm not saying it was costing me shots or anything but it got to the point where I felt I might be picking up shots if I had a proper caddy. A more experienced guy."

It made it tougher that his new bagman, Dermot Byrne, had roomed with Reynolds for the five weeks the latter was on tour. Byrne had parted company with Peter Lawrie and when Lowry sat down with him he knew within minutes that he had found the right man. Lowry had been paired with Lawrie at Loch Lomond and, without saying anything, Byrne had been impressed by the young man's game. Byrne knew that carrying Lowry's bag wouldn't carry an instant dividend. But his talent and potential were luminous. In Lowry he was making a long-term investment.

Lowry sees the difference in the small details. At the Czech Open, their first tournament together, he missed the cut and, instinctively, thought to book a flight and be home in Offaly that night. Byrne suggested an alternative. Why not stay in the Czech Republic and then head straight to Ohio where Lowry was playing in the Bridgestone Invitational the following week? It would mean two flights instead of four and two extra days' practice with world-class facilities. "Simple stuff," says Lowry. "But it makes a huge difference."

In Ohio he teed it up with the top players in the world, played badly and struggled on the billiard-table greens, yet didn't feel out of place. After it was over Byrne told him of the conversation he'd had with Gareth Lord, caddy for the Swedish golfer, Robert Karlsson. "Lordy called him and said well done, you didn't do too bad. Dermot said 'what do you mean? We shot 20-over'. Yes, said Lordy, but the first time we played here Robert shot 30-over."

Four months on, the toothy smile of Baltray remains intact. He knew the trap after winning the Irish Open would have been to dive straight into the deep end and feel pressure to perform immediately. Instead there have been no big splashes or Justin Rose-style crises, missing cut after cut after cut. He doesn't feel he has anything to prove. Not yet anyway. He's not rushing from one tournament to the next in a lather-filled state of panic.

From now the season unfolds promisingly. Three weeks in Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong in November. The possibility of playing in Japan after that. And then seven weeks at home during the winter to train and practise and sharpen his appetite for his first full year as a pro. "Hopefully have a good season next year," he says. "Get into the Race to Dubai. The top 60 on the Order of Merit. The top 100 in the world. Down the line the top 50 and into the Majors and the World Golf Championships. At Bridgestone, I kept saying to myself this is where you want to be."

Gradually he feels it coming together. Last month, he travelled to Holland to play in the KLM Open and, for the first time as a pro, saw his name at the top of the leaderboard and held it together sufficiently for a top 15 finish. The course had a linksy feel and he had envisaged himself playing well on it, savouring the satisfaction of seeing such confident thoughts gaining their reward.

"It made a change looking at the top of the leaderboard rather than the cut-off mark. Psychologically, that made a big difference. Seeing guys on 10-under instead of 'oh, I've got five shots to play with here or two shots or whatever'. I hear people saying they don't look at scoreboards, but how do you miss them? The size of them beside every green. You see your name on the leaderboard it means you're doing well."

Today he'll drive to Dublin, pick up Byrne and take the ferry to Scotland and head for the castle Ridge has booked for his golfers outside St Andrews. He has had his eye on the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship for some time now, a Pro-Am tournament that takes in rounds at Carnoustie, Kingsbarns and the Old Course. It is the first time he has played at a links venue since Baltray and the nature of the event suggests it will be relaxed and serious at the same time. It should suit him to a tee.

A few weeks ago he had dinner with Byrne and they talked eagerly about St Andrews. Lowry has played the Old Course before but Byrne has 15 years' experience on Tour and the younger man was keen to tap into his knowledge. Byrne told him there were two approaches to consider. He could bail out by driving down the left and shooting level par. Or he could play it down the right, the tight side, and give himself the option of going for the pin each time.

Lowry listened and stayed silent. Talking about such a venerated course the kid didn't want to sound disrespectful or, being superstitious, he didn't want to put a jinx on himself. But in his mind another decision was being taken. There was only one side he would be going.

Dolph Starbeam

Good read so it is, nice to see he's taking it all in his stride, he knows he's got a lot to learn.

Codofwar

I thought he had made the wrong decision in going pro too quick but by the sound sof it he has his head screwed on and isn't setting himself unrealistic targets too quick. Best of luck to him.