Pádraig Harrington was dissecting his own round with the media on Saturday when his eye caught a TV screen just as Shane Lowry was plotting his exit from the notorious Coffin Bunker on the par-three 8th. “Oh no,” said Harrington, mid-sentence. Lowry was one-under for his round at that point and eight-under for the tournament.
He had elbow room to spare at the summit of the leaderboard but his lie in the sand was awkward and he would leave the Postage Stamp nursing a dirty double bogey. It wasn’t terminal in itself but the weather was getting its dander up. Negligible winds were building up to a considerable gust as the Offaly man’s round went on and they allied with torrential downpours that made the back nine an absolute slog.
Lowry carded five double bogeys on the way in. It was so punishing that it required drivers at par-threes and his demeanour after a damaging six-over 77 that leaves him on one-under and three behind overnight leader Billy Horschel was worrying. He had horsed an on-course commentator out of it at the 11th and the R&A got an earful when he was done for not taking heed of the forecast and bringing some tees forward.
Horschel, Justin Rose, Xander Schauffele and surprise packet Dan Brown had all faced the worst of the elements on the Saturday afternoon too. they had managed to traverse the windswept links in far better fashion. The task for Lowry now as he attempts to chase down a second Open Championship is to flush these toxins from his mind by the time he takes to the first tee at 1.
45pm alongside Australia’s Adam Scott. He needs to take ownership of his tournament again. Harrington, speaking just as his countryman’s troubles started at that costly par-three 8th, couldn’t have known how prescient his words would be at the time.
“Shane just has to realise that no matter what happens today he will have a great chance of winning tomorrow afternoon so, as tough as it gets on the back nine, if he plays it great then he will have a lead and if it eats him up in some way he will still have a chance tomorrow afternoon,” said the Dubliner. “I would love to be in Shane Lowry’s shoes at this moment.” The 37-year was perfectly entitled to gripe about the conditions and the difficulties they caused after his third round torment, but he was complicit in his own downfall with a temperament that overheated and some poor execution.
Some of his work around and on the green was just poor regardless of the wind and the rain. The latest weather forecast – which has been changeable all week – predicts a wind that may actually tail off in the afternoon and much less in the form of rain. There are only eight players ahead of him at the start of business on Sunday and the furthest away, Horschel, has only three strokes on him.
The problem is that two of those in-betweeners are Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele. Justin Rose, who has been consistently impressive and gritty, is another. Only nine players sat under par at the dawn of the last day but Scott, Justin Thomas and Matthew Jordan, all of them on even-par, have their motivations too.
This is wide open yet..
