Lowry looks beyond Mountain

Shane Lowry can forget about his world ranking for a while after realising his ambition to qualify for the WGC-Accenture Match play Championship later this month but the Irish golfer knows he has work to do if he is to achieve his longer-term objectives.

Lowry learned he would be in the field for the first World Golf Championship event of 2013 and making his debut in Tucson, Arizona, when he slipped just one place in the world rankings to No 65 on Sunday night.

The Portugal Masters champion, who last week helped the European Tour launch their ticket sales bid for this year’s Irish Open at Carton House, near Maynooth in Kildare, will travel to Dove Mountain next week courtesy of a 72nd-hole putt by American pro Patrick Reed at the PGA Tour’s AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Reed’s birdie putt dropped to put him into a tie for seventh place with Swede Freddie Jacobson, who needed to finish alone in that spot to make the Accenture field. Instead he rose to only 66th and Lowry stamped his ticket for Tucson by a mere 0.0002 ranking points behind Lowry.