This could be Shane Lowry’s year, reckons Padraig Harrington

The Open Championship has not been a happy hunting ground for Shane Lowry over the past two seasons but Pádraig Harrington believes the 30-year-old has the credentials to become Ireland’s fifth recipient of the Auld Claret Jug.

Harrington returns to Royal Birkdale this week, nine years on from his 2008 triumph, the second of two victories in golf’s oldest major. His 2007 win at Carnoustie was a significant breakthrough for Irish golf, a first major success since Fred Daly’s at Hoylake in 1947, and Harrington has since been followed as the R&A’s champion golfer by Darren Clarke in 2011 at Royal St George’s and Rory McIlroy in 2014, also at Hoylake. That was where Lowry enjoyed his best finish at The Open, a tie for ninth, seven strokes behind McIlroy, but there have been two missed cuts in the championship since.

Despite that disappointing run, Harrington believes his friend has what it takes to get the job done and points to Lowry’s Irish Open win as an amateur in 2009 and his WGC-Bridgestone Invitational success in 2015 as meaningful stepping stones to one of golf’s greatest prizes.