Shane Lowry was the animated spirit of a lackluster performance by Team Europe, which suffered a 19-9 loss at the 43rd Ryder Cup.
One of the few bright moments for Europe was when Lowry holed an 11-footer on the final hole of his Saturday fourballs match to beat Tony Finau and Harris English. The Irishman pumped his fist in the air and dropped his putter while yelling in celebration.
But the while the 2019 Open champion showcased the thrill of victory, he also endured the agony of defeat. Golfwrx reported that Lowry, while speaking on Instagram Live to PaddyPower, a restricted profile in the U.S., said Patrick Cantlay was an irritant during Sunday singles.
“Yeah, [Cantlay] pissed me off a little bit on the eighth, to be honest,” Lowry reportedly said. “I was lining up my putt and he was riling up the crowd, which I didn’t think was great. In Rome, we’ll hopefully win and win in a different style, that’s how I’m looking at it.”
Highlights: Lowry/Hatton secure four-ball win
But Cantlay, who won their singles match, wasn’t the only player who apparently bothered Lowry. The 34-year-old wasn’t happy with Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Thomas, who both displayed their dissatisfaction after not being given short putts. Both players, at separate times during Saturday matches, laid their putters parallel to the green to show their putts were supposedly “in the leather.”
“For a start, Bryson Dechambeau’s putter shaft is about 4 feet long so it was definitely not a gimme,” he said. “Justin Thomas did the same thing and then I did the same thing, but purely because Justin Thomas did it. They made me hit a putt from literally 18 inches on the first so I did the exact same thing as Thomas did, just because I was annoyed with the picture I’d seen of him that morning.”
Lowry admitted that he wasn’t in the mood to give gimmes, either.
“I wasn’t giving them anything last week, because I was getting booed,” he said. “I was playing with Tyrrell Hatton on Saturday afternoon and he wanted to give them a couple of balls and I said, ‘No, let’s just let them see the ball in.’ It was a bit of gamesmanship from me as well. I was just trying to annoy them and get in their heads as well, but it obviously didn’t work.
Lowry completed his cup debut with a 1-2-0 record.
“I’m disappointed with the scoreline, because I think we deserved more than that because we were a great team, a great unit,” Lowry said. “We just didn’t perform as well as we should’ve.”