‘I just have to play s ***’

With a respectable rise of Pinta to Padraig HarringtonThe two most popular players in the field in the 153rd championship open had their place for themselves on Monday.

We do not mean golf course; This was, of course, available to all 156 competitors. We talk about the center of the press in Royalwhere Rory Mcilroy And Shane Lowry were, on the opening day of the open week, the only players that Royal & Ancient formally invited to speak to the media. Favorable treatment? No doubt. All good, anyway. Home games should come with skill.

Mcilroy grew just over an hour by car in southern Portrush, in the city of Holywood. At the age of 16, all the curls and talent, he signed for a 61 in the open Dunluse of Portrush, a sign still standing. (“I don’t remember much about him,” Mcilroy said on Monday before adding, “It was certainly the first time I would ever feel, like in the area or that flowing condition or whatever you want to call it.”)

Lowry rose a little further south, across the border, in Clara, in the geographical heart of Ireland. He holds another kind of portrait record: six summer ago, Lowry only became the second golf player who won one Championship In this loving connection, a victory has since been commemorated by a two -story wall painted on the wall of a house just outside the portrait gates. One hundred years from now they will still be greeting Lowry in the portrait drinks, and maybe even a hundred years after that, too, assuming this broken piece of paradise is not washed in the sea.

So yes, Mcilroy and Lowry Vibes are strong this week, as they were in 2019, when Portrush welcomed again open for the first time in 68 years. For Mcilroy and Lowry, the support must be comforting. But it can also be overwhelming, even pressing. “I think the first morning was the most nervous I have ever been to the first thesis of a tour,” Lowry said Monday. “All what you want to do is get the ball down the road.”

When Mcilroy climbed to the first thesis in the first round, butterflies in the stomach I felt more like Raptors. He admitted Monday that “I’m not ready for the way I would feel or what I would feel.” There is no need to review the horrors of the next 5 hours, but they were not beautiful. Mcilroy hit his opening from the borders and continued to shoot 79. He was admired in the second round, but still lost the cut.

Mcilroy has spoken at the length of the challenges and stroke of the heart of that return in 2019. But on Monday, Lowry added a new perspective, saying, “I remember at the time everyone thought, this is the end of the world. Rory is there losing cutting, he is there doing 8 in 1. Golf will never be the same.”

But the thing is, Lowry said, it’s all part of the concert. As a world -class golf player, “You Continue and forget”. He added: “I think you realize what you do today – it’s not the end of the world. In fact it is not. Just apply yourself the way you can and then go out and give 100 percent. That’s all you can do.”

And who knows, maybe six years later you will be Earn your first green jacket and Grand Slam career.

It is interesting to hear Lowry distribute the mental game because, with his acceptance, he is not exactly Roger Federer when it comes to competitive composition. In fact, Lowry is known to pass full Hulk when things don’t go on his way. After playing a wedge kick from a bad lie in the PGA championship earlier this year, Lowry blocked his club On the highway and showed an inappropriate explanatory for family programming. “I’ve had some episodes this year, but golf is hard at this level,” Lowry said on Monday. “And there have been times when, yes, I haven’t been to my maximum. But I feel like I’m too good to get there and competing against the best in World and weeks out and giving myself the best goal.”

Lowry has worked on thinking more positively. Helping that front have been his coach, Neil Manchip, and also a new additional Lowry Stable: Mental Whiz Loyal, Bob Rotella, who also works with mcilroy Among a host of other tour professionals. Lowry first connected with Rotel by Coincidence, when Rotella was attending the world golf Harrington Golf Golf Hall in the induction of fame at Pinehurst US Open last summer.

As it happened, Lowry was coming out of a fourth round 85 in the memorial and in such a gloomy state that he was withdrawing from the US Open. It was in front of a quick but influential conversation with the Lowry Rotel. “He just told me that I have to forgive myself and let myself do it,” Lowry later said that week in Pinehurst. “The only thing you can’t do is stop at it, and you just have to forget it and go on.”

Monday, Lowry said something else interesting: that he is often to his maximum when it is NO to its maximum. It sounds like something Yogi Berra may have said, but Lowry explained it in a way that makes perfect sense.

“Sometimes when everything is really going well, I’m complacent,” he began. “Then all of a sudden before I know it, I’m like three during five and you start panicking because you feel like you are going to do well.

“I feel like things aren’t going well is when I’m at the maximum, or when I don’t feel like things are going well.”

Lowry quoted Open 2019. He said he would play “some of the best golf of my life” going that week, but at the same time it was “Antsy and quite raised for all things”. On Wednesday that week, he had what he described as a “merger” because he had convinced himself that he would quickly get out of the tournament.

On the contrary, the opposite happened.

Lowry opened with a pair of 67 before posting a third round result that won Open: a 63 blind. “If I can keep my complacency away and my expectation down, that’s when I’m to my maximum,” he said on Monday.

As for his mood this week?

“I feel good about the last two days, so it’s not great,” he said, laughing.

“No, honestly, I’ve had a great week,” he said. “I’ve had a great week of practice. I just have to play S *** for the next two days, and I’ll be okay.”