Shane Lowry tees-up in this week’s final event of the ‘regular’ PGA Tour season at the Wyndham Championship in North Carolina needing to put the foot down if he’s to be heading next week to Memphis and the opening event of the ultra-lucrative three-tournament Play-Off Series.
Lowry is returning to competition after the bitter disappointment in missing the halfway cut at last month’s Open Championship, and teeing-up this week lying 76th on the Play-Off standings, and six spots from qualifying for next week’s top-70 Play-Off opener in Memphis.
“I’m here because I want to make it into next week,” said Lowry.
“I think it’s easy to sit here and go, oh, I just want to play well, I want to go out and try and win the tournament. No, at the end of the day, I want to make it into next week, I want to make it into the Playoffs and I want to make a run at the Playoffs.”
It’s not the first time Lowry has teed-up in the Wyndham without a second agenda such as he faces this week, but after a PGA Tour 2022/23 season boasting just one top-10 in 17 events, Lowry would dearly love to be travelling next week to the Land of the Delta Blues and then onwards and up to the final Play-Off event in Atlanta.
“You know, at this stage I’m sitting here and I still feel like I can make the Tour Championship, so that’s an exciting place to be. I think obviously I would prefer it if I was in a better spot coming in here, but I’m not. It is what it is now and I’m going to need a good week this week,” he said.
“Memphis is a course that I like playing and I’ve played all right in the past, so if I can get there, I know I can make a run there. Yeah, I certainly don’t want to be sitting home on my couch watching the Playoffs. It’s a lot of motivation for me this week to play good golf and hopefully get my rewards at the end of it.
“It’s obviously top-70 this year, not 125, so if you look at the 125 that are here and we’re trying to make it into next week, yeah, you could call it like the first playoff event. But like I said, you need to play well and make a move into next week.”
And while Lowry has his own Wyndham Championship agenda, so does Justin Thomas currently lying 79th on the FedEx Cup standings and nine shops shy of making the lucrative Play-Off Series.
As well, Thomas needs to be playing in any of the three Play-Off events if he’s to have any last chance of being picked in Zach Johnson’s USA Ryder Cup side.
Thomas said: “I’m very confident, I am. It’s different than trying to win a tournament or making a putt for a Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup, whatever it may be, but it’s still that same feeling.
“I was and am so excited to be playing this week. Like I said, it’s just, it’s a cool opportunity, it’s a great opportunity for me. I just, I mean, I’ve been in the right frame of mind I feel like for the last month or so.
“I’ve been in a much better head space of just feeling like really good things are coming, but not as much expecting or saying, you know, when’s this going to be over.
“It’s just making it not as big of a deal as it is and just having an understanding that just having good scoring and doing what I have in the past, and knowing that any week just one shot, one round, one tournament could flip it and in a month nobody’s talking about it anymore.
“I just, yeah, I’m excited. I feel like I’m going to play well this week”.
Thomas also tees-up this week having missed three of four cuts in the majors this season including last month’s Open.
