Shane Lowry’s Troon scouting trip turned ‘mental.’ Now he’s leading The Open

TROON, Scotland — We’ve spent the last week-and-a-half listening to pros talk about golf in a different way. The turf being firm, the wind being heavy, the bunkers being pots — links golf takes something different, so they work at being different. 

Most use last week’s Scottish Open as the perfect warmup. They arrive in Edinburgh a bit bleary-eyed, hail a shuttle out to Renaissance Club — a ritzy, modern course — and grind the sharp edges out of their wedges. They practice weird shots from the fescue, splashes from the lips of bunkers, and stingers with all types of clubs. They all do it in sync, too, like students prepping for the same exam. That must be the right approach, you think. Well, maybe they should be following the Shane Lowry line. 

Lowry, our 37-year-old Open Championship leader, has been grooving his links game for weeks, just like everyone else. But he was doing it elsewhere. Notably, he was doing it here, on a bit of recce.

That’s the slang he used Friday, common in this part of the world, short for reconnaissance. 

Lowry — and last week’s Scottish Open champ, Bob MacIntyre — left America weeks ago and visited Royal Troon in early July. Mother Nature repaid them for their commitment, offering up “mental” conditions, according to one member of Team Lowry. Over two days, Lowry claimed to see the course ‘in every wind possible.” Most of the field grumbled about not prepping for the abnormal conditions that arrived in round 1. Lowry pulled his hat down and shot 66.  

That comes with doing your homework. Tiger Woods didn’t do his. The LIV guys were in the south of Spain, where people go for honeymoons. Wyndham Clark’s final round 62 at Renaissance turned into a 78-80 performance here on the other side of the country. 

Lowry enjoyed his recce so much that he sent out what now seems like a warning on Instagram, a video of him going driver, 3-iron on the 18th hole with wind and rain whipping into his mug. “Bad day for shorts,” said the caption, even though he was wearing some. What he didn’t tell you — as the person holding the camera said “yeah, what a flight” — was that driver, 3-iron ended up short of the green. 

From Troon, Lowry went home, to Ireland — a trip he doesn’t get to make much these days. But similar to MacIntyre, home can feel extra special after a long, grinding season in America.

“I always really enjoy my week in Ireland the week before The Open,” Lowry said, “and I go around and play some links golf and hang out with my friends. I really feel like that puts me in a good frame of mind going into play a big tournament.”

He mentioned that twice Friday afternoon. Frame of mind. 

“This week in my head feels like that — where I think I’m ready to take what comes, take what’s given to me out there. Almost ready for — anything that’s thrown at me, I feel like I’m ready to take it on the chin and move on.”

More than wedge grinds and low shots and avoiding bunkers, that is what links golf sounds like. Take what’s given to you. The idea was never clearer Friday afternoon, when Lowry turned back downwind for the finishing stretch, holding a two-shot lead. He left his 11th tee shot out to the right, in the fescue, and allowed his mind to stray, for the slightest moment, to a cameraman kneeling up the rope line.

A few seconds later, Lowry sent his ball hooking left. It flew a little more than 100 yards, skimming low over spectators heads and landing so softly into the gorse bush behind them that most didn’t even notice. Lowry let out a proper, Irish-accented four-letter F-word, then berated the nearby cameraman for moving within his eyesight while he was over the ball. 

Could he have paused his process to regain focus? That’s a regret he’ll stew on tonight as he enjoys the lead all to himself. Friday’s 69 could have been a 67. But what followed was a formulaic, almost distractingly patient procedure. A provisional, a found ball, stepping off a yardage to the next fairway over, a drop in the rough, then stepping off a new yardage. Finally — with Scottie Scheffler stretching back in the fairway to stay warm — a careful swing short of the green and an up-and-down 6. 

“I felt like through that whole process of that 20 minutes — whatever it was — of taking the drop, seeing where I could drop, and I felt like I was very calm and composed and really knew that I was doing the right thing, and I felt like Darren did a great job, too — he kept telling me, we have loads of time. We don’t need to rush this. We just need to do the right thing here.”

He followed that mess by playing driver, then a 4-iron to 32 feet on the 12th. “Two of the best shots I’ve hit all week,” he said later. It kick-started a two-under bounce-back that pushed him to a comfy, solo lead, and something he had back in 2019 when he won the Open: a super late tee time. A 5-hour midterm that comes after breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack. Another test of patience. The first of a bunch this weekend.