Lowry: 'I thought I had it'

Gutted Shane Lowry lets another chance slip away with meltdown at PGA National

Shane Lowry let a three-shot lead go away on the last three holes (Raj Mehta/Getty Images)

Shane Lowry stood up to the pressure of the Ryder Cup last year, hitting the approach shot and holing the birdie putt against Russell Henley that clinched retaining the cup for Europe to avoid a final-day collapse.

So how do you explain what happened Sunday at PGA National or in January in Dubai or the handful of other times the element of “choke” has resided Lowry adjacent?

How do you explain a major champion who has been in numerous pressure-packed situations squandering a three-shot lead with three holes to play?

Or making consecutive double bogeys to lose the Cognizant Classic?

“How do I feel like this now when I went through what I did last September in Bethpage and got through that fine?” Lowry told reporters after a final-round 69 ultimately handed the tournament trophy to Colombia’s Nico Echavarria. “I just felt like it was weird out there. I just really — yeah, just couldn’t feel the club face the last three holes then after my tee shot on 16. It was strange.

“What can I say? It’s very disappointing. Geez, this is going to be hard to take. Dubai was hard at the start of the year, but this is going to be pretty hard.”

The Irishman who won the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush was referring to the Dubai Invitational on the DP World Tour at the start of the year where a final-hole approach shot led to another double bogey and a third-place finish when he was tied for the lead heading to the last.

But this was far worse. Lowry, who has not won an individual event worldwide since the 2002 BMW PGA Championship, had played the first 15 holes Sunday brilliantly, going 6-under par with four birdies and an eagle to forge a three-shot advantage on the 16th tee. He was 19-under while Echavarria was 16-under a hole ahead of him.

On the 16th hole — part of the vaunted Bear Trap — Lowry hit an iron off the tee for safety. Yet somehow he missed it in a spot where no other player had all week — short and right into the water.

The led to a double bogey, and when Echavarria birdied the par-3 17th ahead of him — narrowly finding the green first with his tee shot — they were suddenly tied after the three-stroke swing.

Lowry then stepped onto the 17th tee and missed the green badly from 168 yards with a 7-iron, rinsing another shot in the water.

“It was a perfect number for me, and it suited me perfectly,” Lowry said. “Wind was slightly in out of the left, and that’s my bread and butter, a little chip 7-iron. But golf does strange things to you at times, and it certainly did it to me today.”

Give Lowry credit for stopping to speak to the media afterward. It was a brutal way to end a tournament, especially for a guy who has difficulty closing them.

“I had the tournament in my hands and I threw it away,” he said.

Echavarria — who was close to qualifying for the Masters via the top 50 Ofiicial World Golf Ranking at No. 59 — now has a guaranteed ticket to Augusta, making him the first PGA Tour winner to qualify.

But the story Sunday was Lowry. Unlike so many who are eligible for the signature events, Lowry did not skip Cognizant. The event is near his Florida home and he’s played it several times over the years, letting victories slip away there on multiple occasions. While most of the top names including everyone in the OWGR top 25 took the week off, Lowry was on the verge of being rewarded while in the midst of playing five weeks in a row.

“You have no choice, do you,” Lowry said, when asked how you move on from it. “I have a tee time next Thursday in Bay Hill (for the Arnold Palmer Invitational), and I have no choice but to move on.

“The hardest thing about today is I’ve never won in front of my 4-year-old, and she (Ivy) was there waiting for me,” he added. “Yeah, I only wanted it for her today. I didn’t want it for — I don’t care about anything else. I wanted it so bad. Just to see her little ginger hair running down the 18th green would have been the most special thing in the world. I thought I had it. I thought I was going to win.

“I didn’t get ahead of myself, but I felt so comfortable out there, and then yeah, tried to get a lot out of my 3-iron on 16 and did the only thing I couldn’t really do.”