Shane Lowry keeps nerve to dig himself out of Oakmont hole

A player’s body language can tell a thousand tales, and Shane Lowry’s didn’t hide anything as he approached his ball on the first hole.

He’d only gotten his bid for this US Open under way some 10 minutes earlier and, two shots already played, he was in trouble: 50 yards short of the green with a tricky downhill pitch to a dastardly positioned flag.

Lowry had that look, one of grimness, as he moved towards the ball.

What a difference a few seconds can make. Lowry took the yardages from his caddie, Dermot Byrne, twirled his gap wedge in his hand and then positioned himself over the ball. No time wasted. Swoosh! He knew instinctively that the perfect contact had been made, and then watched as the ball hit the green some 20 feet short of the pin and ever so slowly worked its way to the tin cup before disappearing from view. One-under-par. Boom!

“Way to go Shane!” came a roar from the stands, and as he made his way across the pedestrian bridge above the Pennsylvania Turnpike – I-76 – that separates seven holes, from the second to the eighth, from the rest of the course, the trucks laden with heavy goods blared their horns.

Lowry, though, made the journey from the first green to the second tee box with a smile and pep in his step. He was up and running, sucking in the air and living life.

If Lowry’s opening three shots produced a poor 2-iron tee-shot into a fairway bunker, a conservative recovery shot and then a miracle wedge, it all conspired to bring a huge smile to Lowry’s face, a salute to those in the bleachers gathered by the first green, and the sort of momentum that players always look for.

Unfortunately for Lowry, and all of the players in the early wave of starters, this wasn’t a day for any mojo. One weather delay followed another and instead patience was the order of the day.

For Lowry, his trip across the footbridge was one of calm assurance.

On the second, despite his 2-iron tee shot finishing up in a divot, and his approach shot spinning back to the front of the green, Lowry kept his cool and played a deft pitch to four feet and rolled in the par putt. And, on the third, after driving into the left rough, he again played a recovery to the front of the green and two putted for another par.

On this course, par is good. And Lowry picked off another par on the Par 5 fourth before pushing his tee shot into the right rough on the sixth where he played a good recovery to the back of the green.

It was on reaching his ball there that the siren sounded. The weather warning signs had been placed on scoreboards when Lowry was on the second green and the front had moved in swiftly. He marked his ball, and it would be almost an hour and a half later – after the front moved off – before he returned to claim another par. [CROSSHEAD]Evacuation vans[/CROSSHEAD] Lowry’s first bogey of the round came on the seventh, shortly before the second suspension in play. The second break in play lasted two hours and 26 minutes and Lowry – along with caddie Byrne, coach Neil Manchip and his dad Brendan – were brought back to the eighth hole in one of the evacuation vans.

It wasn’t long before he was incurring another bogey, on the ninth, to turn in one-over 36. Not the end of the world by any means, and the Offaly man managed to get back to level par for this round through 12 holes when he rolled in a 14-footer for birdie on the 11th.

Lowry’s drive on the par five 12th, though, found a fairway bunker down the right and he could only advance it 100 yards up the fairway. Still, left with 280 yards to the pin, he reached the green with a 3-wood – some 30 feet from the hole – and he had only marked it when the siren sounded, again, for the third stoppage of the round.

At least Lowry had manfully held his game together, sharing tied-eighth on level par when the play was suspended. He’d battled well, the difficulty of finding fairways demonstrated by only finding four of 10 fairways and hitting six of 12 greens in regulation.

The stopping and starting was disruptive, but Lowry – aiming to improve on his top-10 finish at Chambers Bay a year ago and looking for a spark to his season – had managed to stay in the game.

On a day like this, that’s all that could be asked of anyone.