Former Open Champion Shane Lowry is looking forward to beginning his Horizon Irish Open challenge today at Mount Juliet in Co Kilkenny.
“I say it every year, it’s always great to come back to The Irish Open, the tournament. 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, and, yeah, 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.”
Discussing his good early season form, the Offaly native said:
“It’s been a nice stretch for me, and I feel confident, I feel good about my game. So it’s just about managing expectation in a week like this really. But I feel like I’m doing that every week because I feel like every week I play now is such a big week, and every week I really want to do well.”
Though there is added pressure on the Irish players this week to perform in front of the home crowd, according to the former Irish Open Champion Shane Lowry:
“It’s just managing expectation, managing myself around the course and allowing myself to play good golf, and I’ll be fine. I treat it like any other tournament. I was actually talking about it the other night, you come back to Ireland like once a year to play this tournament. And especially this year, when things have been going well and I’ve been playing quite good, there’s no point shying away, 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.”
So, how will the Clara-native perform this week?
“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. When I was a kid coming to The Irish Open, that’s what I wanted. So it’s nice to be able to do that. And, no, not doing anything different. I’m staying here on site, my family are here. I’m going to up and down and around for dinner and stuff. Nothing really different.”
