Lowry: 'You have no God-given right to go out and shoot four-under there today'

LONG WEEKEND AHEAD: Shane Lowry prepares to play out of the trees on the eighth hole at Mount Juliet Estate. Picture: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

Best laid plans and all that. Pulling his opening tee shot into a fairway bunker wasn’t the start that Shane Lowry would have had in mind when he got his Horizon Irish Open challenge underway at eight o’clock yesterday morning.

The pre-tournament favourite managed to scramble for a par on that par-five tenth but his game continued to splutter and cough until the sixth, his 15th, when he finally made it into the red and followed it with a second straight birdie with two more to play.