TROON, Scotland — Shane Lowry put himself in the driver’s seat to win a second career British Open with a gritty second-round performance Friday at Royal Troon.
Lowry, who began the day one shot out of the lead, shot a 2-under-par 69 to get to 7-under for the tournament and hold a two-shot lead over first-round leader Daniel Brown as the afternoon groups were teeing off for their respective second rounds.
The 37-year-old, who won the 2019 Open at Portrush, was in cruise control at 2-under-par through 10 holes in the round, until he reached the difficult par-4 11th.
“I was in control of my ball, did all the right things for a lot of the round and then when I got in a bit of trouble,’’ Lowry said of a second shot he tugged into a thick gorse bush on 11.
That cost him a double bogey, dropping him back to 5-under par, but he rallied with a birdie on the par-5 16th and another on 18 to close.
“I feel like I really finished the round well,’’ Lowry said. “I’m pretty happy with the day. To be leading this tournament after two days, it’s why you come here, it’s why we’re here.
“I’ll sit back and watch a bit of golf in the afternoon and see where it leaves me come the end of the day, and get out there tomorrow. The job tomorrow as well is to try to put myself in a position to win this tournament on Sunday, and that’s what I’ll try and do.’’
Lowry’s issue on the 11th ironically occurred after he’d hit the most difficult shot on the hole — the tee shot — with the railway just a few yards to the right of the hole. His tee shot came to rest in the right rough and his second shot went way left into the bush.
“I did the hard part; I hit my drive where you could find it, which is obviously a hard thing to do on that hole,’’ Lowry said. “I got a little bit distracted on the right just as I was over the shot, and I kind of lost a bit of train of thought. You’re so afraid of going right there that I just snagged the club and went left.
“Then from there, I hit a great provisional. The referee asked me going down, ‘Did I want to find my first one?’ And I said, ‘No.’ So, I assumed that was OK. Then we get down there, and somebody had found it.
“So, apparently we have to find it then, or you have to go and identify it, which I thought, if you declared it lost before it was found, that you didn’t, you didn’t have to go and identify it. I felt like through that whole process of that 20 minutes of taking the drop, seeing where I could drop, and I felt like I was very calm and composed and really knew that I was doing the right thing.
“To be honest, I was happy enough leaving there with a 6. It was not like it wasn’t a disaster. I was still leading the tournament.’’
Lowry called the 12th hole “a key’’ to his round because it “was playing very difficult, straight into the wind.’’
“I hit driver, 4-iron there, too, the best shots I’ve hit all week, to about 30 feet and made par there,” he said. “From then on, I felt like (wind) down out of the left coming in, it was playing quite difficult, but I felt like you could give yourself chances on the way in, and that’s what I did.’’
Lowry lauded how calm he was in the windy conditions.
“I get to conditions like this, and I know I can do it, I know I can deal with that,’’ he said. “There’s an art (to it). It’s quite difficult to stand up there from 190 yards and make yourself hit a 4-iron as low as you can. It’s quite difficult to tell yourself that.’’
Lowry credited the time he spent around home in Ireland in the lead-up to this week playing links golf with his buddies as a help.
“The golf I’ve played in Ireland, coming here and doing my (preparation) here a few weeks ago, I feel like that’s all helped,’’ he said. “I have felt quite calm and composed the last couple of days. I’ve felt really in my comfort zone. Yeah, I’m pretty happy with how things have gone.’’
To his credit, Brown, who had the 36-hole lead at 6-under, hung in there and dropped only one shot on Friday, standing on 5-under par.
This is a 29-year-old journeyman who entered the week having missed seven of his previous eight cuts on the DP World Tour and making it into the field after draining a 20-foot putt on the final hole of 36-hole qualifying.
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