Shane Lowry: 'That was probably the toughest two days of golf that I’ve played'

Shane Lowry made the cut for the Masters weekend. 

Shane Lowry, of Ireland, watches his tee shot on the fourth hole during second round at the Masters. Picture: AP Photo/Matt Slocum

Calling it the trickiest winds he’s ever played golf in, Shane Lowry etched a second-round 74 that proved good enough to get him into the Masters weekend at 3-over par.

“Look, I’m not overly happy with my two days’ work, but I’m here for the weekend, and I’ll give it a run,” Lowry said.

Walking up 18 for the second time on Friday, Lowry’s caddie, Darren Reynolds, expressed the 32-hole day they were finishing as if it had been a prize fight.

“If you’re talking in boxing terms, walking up 18, he said, ‘You’d think it was round 12 today, not round 2,’” Lowry said.

“Yeah, it was tough, the two days. Shooting 1-over how I played yesterday was pretty disappointing, and then I was behind the black ball after a few holes today. I battled well. I’m proud of myself for playing the last six holes in 1-under to make the cut, and yeah, hopefully go out there and have a decent weekend.” 

Finishing up the last five holes of his first round Friday morning, Lowry three-putted the 18th to post 1-over 73. After a quick turnaround, he three-putted both the first and third holes in his second round as the consistently gusting winds took a toll.

“It’s so hard out there. It’s honestly a lot of guesswork, a lot of luck involved,” he said. “It’s hard to hole putts. It’s hard to hit it close. There's a lot of luck involved out there today. The wind is all over the place. I’ve never seen it like this. That was probably the toughest two days of golf that I’ve played. You can be made to look like an idiot out there today by not doing too much wrong.

“To be honest, the hardest part out there is putting. I find anyway. The hardest part out there is to hole putts. The wind is just blowing. I can’t imagine what it was doing to poor Akshay (Bhatia). It was blowing me around the place. He nearly got blown away.” 

The wind was especially tricky on the par-3 12th, where Lowry tried to knock down an 8-iron and flew over the back of the green and made bogey to slip to 4-over for the tournament and at the moment on the outside of the cut line.

But from the second cut on 14, he delivered a beauty to 4 feet for a much-needed birdie. He couldn’t convert four decent chances down the stretch but safety got into the weekend.

“12 you’re just hitting and praying today,” he said. “Like I probably should have hit 9-iron, but you get a gust the wrong way, and it’ll barely make the water, let alone carry it.

“I bogeyed 12 but then gave myself a few chances on the way in, and I’m very happy the way I played when I needed to. I played all the golf. I played good enough golf to be nearly on the leaderboard or on the leaderboard the last two days. It’s just my scoring.” 

After he what said was sure to be a good night’s sleep, Lowry will get to go out pretty early in what should be more calm conditions on the weekend and try to make a move back into contention.

“You go out there and try and break 70 and try to have the best week you possibly can,” he said. “You look at it from here, I have 27 holes to get myself into position to maybe make a run at it on Sunday.

“You never know what’s going to happen. You see someone shoot 7-under the first day, you automatically think it’s going to be in the teens winning, but not around here. So we’ll see what happens over the next two days. Stranger things have happened around here, and mad stuff has happened.”