US PGA Championship: Shane Lowry eyeing the big prize

As you enter the locker room here at Baltusrol Golf Club, there's an area to the right reserved for past champions. Their names are on the doors of the wooden lockers: John Mehaffey, Rory McIlroy, Pádraig Harrington. And it is here Shane Lowry has chosen to bring us, into the shadows, to escape the heat outside.

A head peeks in. “I’m looking for your name,” quips Harrington, champion in 2008, and making a big deal of looking for Lowry’s nameplate on any door.

"It'll be in here next year," retorts the Offalyman, adding to the banter about who has to give and who will have the hand out for the greenbacks from their friendly nine holes – in unison with US Open champion Dustin Johnson – that had finished on the 18th and was briefly prolonged for them to walk to the first tee to hit one drive, in the PGA's Long Drive competition.

There, Harrington performed a quick-step version of Happy Gilmore only to be greeted by roars of "Fore!" from Lowry, as his ball shot to the trees down the right. Lowry, for his part, hit his 319 yards, on the board behind the bigger efforts of Ben An, Rory McIlroy and a few others.

In the locker room, Lowry is relaxed, those nameplates of champions a nearby reminder of players who have lifted the famed Wanamaker Trophy. He’s had a close call himself in the Majors this season, his runner-up finish to Johnson in the US Open at Oakmont providing proof, if it were needed, of his ability to contend in these biggest of championships.

And the rawness of a missed cut at the Open a reminder too of how fickle the game can be.

Poor performance

After his poor performance at Troon, Lowry engaged in a number of sit-downs with his coach

Neil Manchip

. The consequence? A healing process of sorts, but also a shift in his mental approach: “I’m just trying to get back down to going out and shooting a good score. If I can go out and shoot under par here on Thursday I’ll be happy, and then go out on Friday and try and shoot under par . . .

“I’ve been shooting myself in the foot a little bit on the last few Thursdays. Three [tournaments] in a row, and you’re basically playing your way out of a tournament. I’ve always said you can lose a tournament on Thursday but you can’t win it. You just have to play your way into the tournament nicely and see what happens.”

Lowry played nine holes yesterday, and the plan is to play nine today. The heat is one mitigating factor against playing too much. The other is that the course is straight in front of players, with no hidden surprises.

Yesterday Lowry and Harrington played nine holes with DJ, and Lowry goes along with the theory that it is good to play practice rounds with players like Johnson if only to get rid of any intimidation when it’s for real. “It’s unbelievable how far he hits the ball,” said Lowry of the athletically built, big-hitting American, adding:

“It’s good to play a practice round with someone like that because you know when you go and play with him in a tournament, you’re not out there looking at him play. It’s hard not to look at Dustin hitting a driver because he hits it so good and so long. It’s one of those, that when you’re used to playing with guys like that it makes it easier when it comes down to the crunch.”

Disruptive weather

Lowry, for sure, is hoping to be among those players involved in whatever crunching takes place come Sunday – or even Monday, if the weather proves as disruptive as is forecast; and, until the death, Lowry handled himself so well in the stop-start nature of the US Open at Oakmont last month.

“I went into the US Open with no expectation, no pressure on myself at all. It was like, ‘You know what? This is probably not going to be my year for the Ryder Cup’. I was thinking a bit like that, then all of a sudden the week after that the pressure is straight back on. I need to get back down to business and see where that takes me.”

No better place than here and now to get back into the flow. And his nameplate would look rather good alongside Harrington’s, and McIlroy’s, and Woods and the rest.