Shane set for lucrative London week

SHANE LOWRY will be nicely set up financially by the end of the week if his manager Conor Ridge has his way.

The newly-crowned 3 Irish Open champion has already received a €20,000 donation from Team Ireland through the Irish Sports Council to defray his costs as a newly-arrived professional and on Monday 3 came on board as sponsor.

While he will wear the 3 logo on his shirt collar, they are unlikely to be his main financial backer, with Ridge due to discuss contract arrangements with Titleist and two other companies during the European Open, starting at the London Club in Kent this morning.

While Lowry seems happy to demur to Ridge’s decisions, he insists he won’t allow money to become the be all and end all of his career.

“I never worried about the €500,000 I would have won in the Irish Open had I been a professional because I knew going into the tournament that I wasn’t going to win that money”, he asserted. “So it didn’t really bother me. I have thought about it since because people have been saying it so much but, hopefully, money will come my way in the future.

“I can now go out and play because when you’ve got an exemption for two and a half years and Team Ireland and 3 have come in with sponsorship, you have something to look forward to for the next 30 months.

“Any player I’ve met this week has come up and congratulated me and welcomed me to the Tour. It’s been great to meet all the guys and I’m sure I’ll get to make some good friends over the years.”

One of Lowry’s most pressing tasks is to work out his schedule for the rest of 2009. After the European Open, he takes in the Wales Open at Celtic Manor next week and he will attempt to pre-qualify for the Open Championship at Turnberry in July while his automatic entry into the $8.5m WGC-Bridgestone event stands out in August.

While there have been reports of friends and family members making some tidy sums (one said to be in excess of €60,000) from Irish Open wagers, Lowry didn’t have a penny on himself.

“No, I am not a gambler at all,” he insisted. “Over the past couple of years, there have been odds on amateur golf and I’ve never become involved.

“That’d be like tempting fate.”