It was a typical Irish summer day at Adair Manor — temperatures in the low 60s, partly cloudy, rain here and there — as play began Thursday morning at the Irish Open.
Don’t worry, if you’re not fond of the playing conditions, they’ll probably change over the next 30 minutes — pretty much the way they do in Scotland and England. Summer can feel like summer but just as quickly feel like fall with winter sniffing around.
Eager crowds gathered for the first round, breaking loose from the pandemic restrictions that robbed UK golf fans of the chance to see their favorites perform.
One of those favorites went out in the early wave — 2019 Open champion Shane Lowry, who thrilled all of Ireland that summer at Royal Portrush. This tournament started Shane’s climb toward the title of major champion as he won the 2009 Irish Open as an amateur. He embraced his role this week as a crowd favorite.
“I say it every year, it’s always great to come back to the Irish Open,” Lowry said earlier this week. “It’s kind of close to me and I owe a lot to it for where I am in the game with the start that I had with the Irish Open in 2009. That gave me the kick-start to my career that I really needed, definitely gave me one up on the rest of the guys around my level at the time.”
Lowry also knows he’ll have a lot of eyes on him. “There’s no point shying away, I’m one of the highest ranked players in the field, one of the top Irish players, one of the players that people really want to do well. There’s expectation there.”
On Thursday, Irish eyes were upon him. “Coming off the back of the ninth green, lots of kids there waiting for me, the last thing I’m going to do is walk past them just because I want to protect myself or play well.”
Lowry didn’t have that great of a performance on day one, he finished one-under par at 71. “All around that, I’m just going to be myself and be as good as I can with everyone and just give people what they want. Because I think that’s just nice,” Lowry said after his day’s work.
His 71 left him seven shots behind first round leader Ryan Fox who has been on a tear in his past few events. He’s 28-under par for his last five competitive rounds. He was in the thick of it last week at the BMW International but came up a bit short of eventual winner Haotong Li.
“I’m more surprised, to be honest, than anything else,” Fox said after another great performance. “I’ve been fighting it on the range the last couple days after the weekend, and certainly didn’t look like it early in the round.” He said something clicked on his eighth hole of the day, the 17th, where he made his second birdie of the round. Then he caught fire on the front nine, starting with four straight birdies then adding two more at the sixth and eighth holes for a 30 coming home.
Fox, twice a winner on the DP World Tour, has climbed to No. 56 in the world.
In his own way, he set the table on day one for a run at a third DP World title.
And this popular Irish Open is setting the table for the main course in two weeks — the 150th Open Championship.
Irish Open Update: Late Friday, Shane Lowry thrilled the crowds following him with birdies on his final four holes — 15, 16, 17 and 18 — to make the 36-hole cut on the number. He went out early Saturday and made a nice run up the leader-board — Shane was four-under through 10 and seven-under for the championship. He pulled within four of 36-hole leader Jorge Campillo, who stood at 11-under after rounds of 65-68.
