Shane Lowry will 'make enemies for 18 holes' as Hero Cup gets underway
Séamus Power and Shane Lowry of team GB&I take a seat ahead of the Hero Cup at Abu Dhabi Golf Club. Picture: Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images
Shane Lowry said he’ll “make enemies for 18 holes” as the Hero Cup gets underway at Abu Dhabi golf club today.
The Offaly man along with Waterford’s Séamus Power as part of a 10-man GB&I team taking on Continental Europe in a Ryder Cup-style event.
Lowry will open proceedings this morning alongside Great Britain and Ireland captain Tommy Fleetwood against Continental Europe’s Alex Noren and Thomas Pieters.
Lowry said yesterday: “I'm probably one of the most competitive people you'll meet. So I'm okay with it - I'll make enemies for 18 holes, no problem. We're all going to be out there trying to beat each other up a little bit and be very competitive against each other. We all want to win. We are all competitive players.
“We all want this a lot, even though there's a lot of Ryder Cup chat this week, I feel like as a team we really want to win this week and I'm looking forward to being part of the GB&I team and looking forward to winning the tournament.”
Belgium’s Thomas Detry and Frenchman Antoine Rozner will represent Team Continental Europe in the second match of the day, with English duo Tyrrell Hatton and Jordan Smith their opponents.
Match Three will pit France’s Victor Perez and three-time DP World Tour winner Guido Migliozzi against another all-English pair in Callum Shinkwin and Matt Wallace, before Continental Europe Captain Francesco Molinari teams up with Denmark’s Nicolai Højgaard against Scot Ewen Ferguson and Richard Mansell, of England.
The only fourballs session of the week will conclude with a mixture of proven winners on both the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour, as Austria’s Sepp Straka and Poland’s Adrian Meronk face Séamus Power and Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre.
Fleetwood said: “We’ve loaded up all the way through really. We have a great team but there are no easy matches. That’s a great team as well but I feel very confident in my guys, like we all do. It’s great to see the pairings finally out and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen.
“I concentrated on our guys but it’s worked out really well. I think the matches look great.”
Molinari, who partnered Fleetwood to four wins in the 2018 Ryder Cup in Paris and also beat Phil Mickelson in the singles, added: "We've been saying all week there are two very talented teams and there will be some exciting golf played in the next few days."
Europe captain Luke Donald hopes the event will provide the ideal "stepping stone" towards regaining the Ryder Cup in September.
Donald is overseeing the event in Abu Dhabi along with the playing captains. The competition effectively fills the gap left by the Seve Trophy, which was held eight times between 2000 and 2013.
Following Henrik Stenson's defection to LIV Golf which cost him the captaincy, Donald has been handed the daunting task of getting the Ryder Cup back in European hands following the record 19-9 defeat at Whistling Straits in 2021.
"I'm looking forward to watching the guys play in that team, match-play aspect," Donald said.
"This was extremely important to get an event like this back on the schedule to give us an opportunity to get these guys in a team and see how they perform in match play. And this is a great first stepping stone, building blocks, for hopefully getting a very successful Ryder Cup in Rome.
"This is my first opportunity to oversee a team event so it's a nice way to work through some of the things. There will be some mistakes made this week and a lot of good things going on behind the scenes.
"It's a great opportunity for me to be around some guys that have a great potential to be in Rome, to get to know them better, and to see how they perform on the golf course.
"There's nothing like when the gun guys off (seeing) how they perform. We don't play a lot of match play in general, we don't play a lot of foursomes, so just seeing how they react, testing out some possible partnerships that might stand the test of time and be in Rome."
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