“It’s kind of the best score I’ve shot in a while and I’m looking forward to the weekend.”
Shane Lowry ended up 16 shots back from Collin Morikawa at the US PGA Championship, last weekend, then spoke at length about how he was only a few better shots and putts off challenging for that Major.
“If I can just clean that up over the next while.” he stated, “I can hopefully make it to the [FedEx] playoffs and hopefully have a run there, then obviously go to Winged Foot [for the US Open], which will be a test that I’m looking forward to and a test that I will like, I think.”
The 2019 Open champion obviously felt he was not far off stringing some good rounds together and, at the Wyndham Championship this week, he has gotten off to a flying start. Lowry shot a 68 for his opening round but fell back to -1 for the tournament when he bogeyed the second hole of his second round.
After that, it was a masterclass from the Clara native. He carded six birdies, no more bogeys and had a hot putter – sinking 22- and 30-feet putts to pick up shots. His best shot of the day came on the 5th hole [his 13th] when he winged in a beauty of an approach shot and used the slope at the back of the green to his advantage.
Credit: PGA TourLowry would roll that putt in to move to -8 and he picked up one more shot down the closing stretch to card a joint best of the day score of 63. That topped his playing partners’ rounds of 68 (for Patrick Reed) and 66 (Paul Casey).
That two-round total of -9 puts Lowry one off the lead heading into the final two rounds. There is a four-way tie for the outright lead, with Talor Gooch, Bill Horschel, Tom Hoge and Si Woo Kim all on -10.
Lowry’s sights are firmly set on the Wyndham Championship, with its’ prize purse of $6.4 million and winners’ cheque of $1.15m, but he has one eye on making the final few tournaments of the FedEx playoffs. He is 131st in the standings right now and only the top 125 make it to the playoff finalé. Following his round, he told Sky Sports:
“Obviously I’m outside the FedExCup number and outside of Boston next week, so I need to keep playing some good golf and try and polish off a good week this week and hopefully make it into next week then.”
“I feel like my golf has been all right over the last couple of months,” he added. “Last week at the PGA on Sunday, I just feel like I didn’t get anything out of my game and ended up having a really bad finish. So hopefully I can get rewarded for some good golf this weekend and who knows what will happen.”
Such was the low scoring in Greensboro that -2 was the cut mark, meaning the likes of Jim Furyk, Charl Schwartzel, Matt Wallace and Graeme McDowell all missed out. Seamus Power (-3) made the cut with the same two-round total as a battling Jordan Spieth.
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