92nd US PGA CHAMPIONSHIP:"YOU HAPPY?" asked Dermot Byrne, leaning on Shane Lowry's golf bag on the third tee box and with two pencils stuck up the back of his baseball cap.
“Yep,” came the one-word reply, and Lowry – a player competing in his first Major on American soil and just his second ever following on from his debut in last month’s British Open at St Andrews – hit his three-iron some 181 yards and saw it finish 25 feet below the hole.
Unfortunately for the Offaly man, the birdie putt stubbornly stayed on the lip and refused to drop.
The player’s reaction was to tap in and walk across the green, a grin creasing his face as a couple of power boats – some 50 feet below the cliffs below – did doughnuts in the lake. Lowry’s outward demeanour suggests a ‘C’est la vie’ approach to golfing life, but inside he has as much desire to succeed as anyone. He wouldn’t be here if that weren’t the case.
Indeed, the two ‘young guns’ of the quintet of Irish players in the field for the 92nd US PGA Championship were the ones to show the older hands the way.
Both Lowry and Rory McIlroy finished their first rounds – after yet another fog delay added to the disruption and the frustration – by signing for 71s, one under, which, truth be known, could have been even better.
Still, the two young bucks grabbed their scores – created in quite different manners – and moved on.
They had no choice in the matter. Some 18 and a half hours after starting their fog-delayed first rounds, the second wave of players were given less than 20 minutes to have a quick lunch and get going again for the second rounds.
Lowry, who’d recommenced his first round on the first tee, having played the back nine on Thursday evening, was up at 4.45am to make the scheduled restart at 7am.
However, more dense fog, which wrapped itself around this lakeshore course, prevented play from starting until two hours and 40 minutes behind the anticipated time and Lowry, starting out at two under, continued to outplay the other players in his three-ball, Scott Verplank and Kevin Na.
On the 489-yard par-4 fourth, Lowry dropped a shot when his drive was pulled slightly left into the rough, and from there he could only pitch out up the fairway, from where he sent a wedge approach to 20 feet. But, just as occurred on the previous hole where his birdie putt refused to drop, Lowry’s par-saving putt edged the hole on this occasion.
He rebounded with a birdie on the fifth, hitting a five-wood approach on the 598-yard par 5 to 12 feet and holing the putt but then suffered back-to-back bogeys on the seventh (where his four iron missed the green left) and the eighth (which he three-putted) before getting back under par with a birdie on the last, where he hit a drive of over 300 yards and followed up with a wedge approach from 140 yards to eight feet.
“I suppose one under is not too bad, it was good to birdie the last and have a decent finish to the round. I’m hitting the ball well and am very confident. I’d two bad shots on seven and eight where I was doubting myself and I didn’t really commit.
“But I feel there’s a score out there for me if I can get it going,” said Lowry, who has come a long way since winning the Irish Open as an amateur at Baltray just over 15 months ago.
He has also come a long way as a player.
“I always wanted to be on the European Tour playing. I was willing to go to Q-School at the end (of 2009) and, to be honest, I thought it might take me three or four years, playing Challenge Tour or something like that, to get onto the main tour and I was happy to do that.
“Yet, luckily enough, I won at Baltray and it all went from there.” Now he can book majors like St Andrews and Whistling Straits into his itinerary.
McIlroy’s round was more turbulent that that of Lowry’s, featuring as it did two double-bogeys, a bogey and six birdies.
“It shows you if you hit it in the rough here, it is so penal and you have to take your punishment at times.
“If I could have made those double-bogeys into bogeys, it would have been better. But it’s a solid start. There’s plenty of golf left to play,” said McIlroy, who was third on his PGA debut at Hazeltine a year ago and who recovered from a horrible start on Thursday evening when he was three over par through four holes.
Aware that he has the capacity to make birdies, McIlroy – who also had a quick turnaround between finishing his weather-delayed first round and starting his second round – felt the key to challenging over the weekend was to “limit the mistakes, and maybe turn those double bogeys into bogeys if I come across bad spots.”
