GOLF: SICILIAN OPEN: SHANE LOWRY has adopted the glass half-full philosophy. As he stood looking out at the brown-hued course here at Donnafugata Golf Resort in the hills above Ragusa, the Offaly man – who has been inactive for the guts of four months due to a broken scaphoid bone in his wrist – prepared to look to the future rather than bemoan any sense of lost time.
“It’s been a tough couple of months, just sitting around and trying to occupy my time with nothing to do,” conceded Lowry ahead of the inaugural Sicilian Open.
“But I’m not coming back out feeling that I have to play catch-up. I was always going to cut down on my playing schedule this year. If you look at it, I played 31 tournaments in 2010. This year, I only plan to play 25 or 26. So, having missed those four tournaments in the Desert Swing, it just narrows everything down automatically.”
In fact, Lowry is belatedly kick-starting his season in Sicily with a run of three tournaments that will take him on to Spain next week and Morocco in a fortnight’s time.
“The next three weeks will be a bit of a transition period, so I don’t have any level of expectation,” he said.
Lowry spent two weeks working on his game in Dubai – the second week with coach Neil Manchip – before moving on to Sicily. And, while he is only now getting around to doing some work on his swing which was originally planned for the winter, his targets are season-long ones rather than immediate, with the aim of ensuring he qualifies for the Race to Dubai at year’s end.
“If I play well enough, I can compete in any tournament. I finished 62nd in the Order of Merit last year and, although I didn’t finish too strongly, it was my first full year on tour and I gained a lot of confidence.”
“The wrist feels strong again and I am not getting any pain,” said Lowry, who is joined in the field by Dubliner Peter Lawrie, seeking to find form after missing two of his last three cuts, and Damien McGrane along with Ulsterman Gareth Maybin, who comes in to the €1 million tournament on the back of a solid start to the season which included a fifth-place finish in the Abu Dhabi Championship.
Australian Richard Green is the top-ranked player off the world rankings – in 64th – competing at the event.
Live on Sky Sports 2, 9.30am- 11.30am; 2.30pm-4.30pm.
Harrington hoping to build momentum
FOLLOWING his best finish of the season at the WGC-Cadillac Championship in Doral last weekend, where he tied for 10th, Pádraig Harrington moves on to this week’s Transition Championship at Palm Harbour in Florida.
The Dubliner, who moved up three places to 34th in the world rankings, was eighth in the event last season.
The tournament is part of his run-up to the US Masters that will also take in the Houston Open in a fortnight.
Live on Sky Sports 3 tonight, 9pm.
