Shane Lowry: 'I felt good about myself for 10 minutes today'

Shane Lowry hits from the fairway at the Masters. Picture: AP Photo/Matt Slocum

For a moment, Shane Lowry saw his opening. “A perfect gap” from the trees on the 14th hole invited a nice 118-yard cut wedge that scooted on and across the green and into the cup for the first eagle in eight years on the par-4 hole called Chinese Fir.

“I felt good about myself for 10 minutes today,” he said. 

“That was the only positive about that. Yeah, this game giveth and it taketh away.” 

The unlikely 2 on 14 snapped Lowry out of a mid-round doldrums, which saw him dropping three strokes on 10, 11 and 12 with consecutive bogeys. “In the middle of the round, it got away from me,” Lowry said.

The eagle pushed him back to 4-over and inspired hope that he could salvage a decent score. But an ensuing three-putt bogey from the back fringe on 15 and another bogey from the front bunker on 17 took the wind out of him as rounds of 73-74-75 have him 6-over heading to Sunday.

“I thought after that (eagle), if I could make one more birdie and shoot under par, it wouldn’t be a bad day, and it quickly went away from me,” he said. 

“Yeah, disappointing day, but what can you do? I feel like I’m playing the golf to be there or thereabouts, but, yeah, just not scoring well.

“I’ve driven the ball well, but I’ve made a lot of silly mistakes. Even that bogey on 17, that’s just stupid really. I was a good bit out with a couple of shots today numbers-wise, and you’re putting pressure on yourself to put it close because you don’t feel like you can hole a putt. One of those days, but live to fight another day, I suppose.” 

From 118 yards into the hole. Shane Lowry holes out for eagle on No. 14. #themasters pic.twitter.com/f2ZV61U5ar

— The Masters (@TheMasters) April 13, 2024

While the winds weren’t as vicious as the first two days, a consistent 10 mph breeze combined with a tougher setup made Augusta National play a different kind of tricky – especially in Amen Corner that put Lowry behind the black ball.

“It’s not pumping like it was yesterday, but 10 miles an hour out here is still tough,” Lowry said.

Lowry is seven strokes arears of a top-12 finish that would guarantee his Augusta return next year and avoiding sweating out the top-50 deadlines now that his Open Championship five-year exemption runs out. So there’s still a lot to play for Sunday even if the green jacket is off the table.

“I’ll go out tomorrow and shoot the best score I can, and I’ll go out to Hilton Head next week and give it a go again,” he said. “It’s the only thing you can do in this game.

“Unfortunately, the game that we play, there’s more days like this than there is good days. I’m old enough now and mature enough now to take it on the chin and move on. That’s the thing with this game. Get up tomorrow and go play Augusta National on a Sunday at the Masters. There could be a lot worse things. There’s a lot worse things happening in the world.

“Now I've got to go do a bit of practice and try to figure out something and hopefully go out there and shoot a decent number tomorrow. I’ll have a goal of going out there and maybe breaking 70 tomorrow. If I do that, I’ll be pretty happy.”