Open hopeful shares heart-warming story about Shane Lowry

Rory McIlroy isn’t the only Open star hoping Shane Lowry gets his hands on the Claret Jug for the second time on Sunday.

After his missed cut at Royal Troon, the Northern Irishman explained that The Open is his good friend Lowry’s “favourite tournament in the world” and that he “can’t wait to watch this weekend”.

And Laurie Canter – who is still in the tournament and carded a one-under 70 on Saturday – told reporters after his round why he is rooting for pacesetter Lowry.

“He’s just got a good temperament for links golf in that I think he’s got a lot of fight about him,” Canter explained. “Like if things are going against him, he’ll knuckle down and just get his head down, and I think he’s going to be very, very difficult to beat in these conditions from what we know about him.”

But it’s not just Lowry’s ability to adapt to the demands of links golf that impresses Canter about the Irishman.

“He just seems like a great guy,” he added. “I’ve got a good Shane Lowry story.

“My first year on tour, I’m playing the Portuguese Masters. I’ve had a terrible year. I played like 15, 18 events as a rookie, missed a load of cuts, made no money, and I was in there with Gary Hurley, another guy in a similar position.

“We were having dinner together at a pizzeria, and end of the meal the bill came, and the lady said, ‘Your bill has been settled by that gentleman over there.’ It was Shane.

“I barely knew him, barely had said a word to him at that point. I think he recognised a couple of rookies and he thought [he would] throw these lads a bone.

“I have not forgotten that. It was a really nice gesture.”

Canter, who won his maiden DP World Tour title at the European Open last month, is currently 11th in the Race to Dubai rankings and in a good position to take one of the ten PGA Tour cards on offer at the end of the season.

“That would be awesome, wouldn’t it?” he said. “To play on the PGA Tour is something I would love to do at some point.

“Still, we’ve got such a long way to go with the second half of the year. A lot of big-point tournaments. To be honest, before I won, I was just trying to play as well as I could out of my category, make sure I was all right for next year.

“It’s slightly moved the goal posts for me. I’ve got something to aim for, and that would be great.”

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The Englishman, who has split his time between the DP World Tour and the LIV Golf League – on which he has played 20 times over its first three seasons, says he “is at peace with the game we play”.

“It felt like when you were playing [on LIV] in the beginning it was like a naughty little secret,” he said. “Now I think there’s a greater acceptance for what it is, what it’s trying to do. That is from my peers on the DP World Tour.

“I just didn’t play well enough, ultimately. I didn’t have enough points. One of the things with LIV is you’ve got a lot of top-quality players, big names who only would have gone if their futures are somewhat secure for a number of years, and in my situation I understood that. I’ve always felt quite happy and accepting of that.

“In that respect, there was always a bit more of a target on my back when I was playing because I knew my place was up for grabs. But I’m pretty at peace with the game we play, and if I would have played a little better or closed off a couple of tournaments I was playing well in, then I might still be out there.

“But it’s been amazing to come back and play full time on the DP World Tour, and I’m thankful I can do that. In that respect I’m one of the lucky ones, and I’ll just keep chasing it the rest of the year and hopefully try and finish as high up the list as I can.”

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Alex Perry is the Associate Editor of bunkered. A journalist for more than 20 years, he has been a golf industry stalwart for the majority of his career and, in a five-year spell at ESPN, covered every sporting event you can think of. He completed his own Grand Slam at the 2023 Masters, having fallen in love with the sport at his hometown club of Okehampton and on the links of nearby Bude & North Cornwall.

Associate Editor