ALFRED DUNHILL LINKS CHAMPIONSHIP

September 29, 2021

Shane Lowry

Press Conference

CLARE BODEL: Welcome, Shane, to the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. If you can tell us, it was a big week for you last week. This is a very different week, very different format. Just tell us, what do you enjoy about coming here to this event.

SHANE LOWRY: Well, I think the fact that I play with the same partner every year; so the reason I'm here this year is to come here and play with Gerry (McManus) and have a good time. My dad and his friends always come over. It's kind of a week that I do love and I love playing here and love. And look, playing golf at St Andrews is pretty cool, especially on days like today where it's nice and sunny.

So obviously it's going to be a little bit of a comedown from last week. Be interesting to see how it goes. But look, I'll just go out play my best and see what happens.

Q. You just mentioned about your emotions and the events of last week. Are you feeling a little bit emotionally drained this week or are you still on much of a high?

SHANE LOWRY: I don't know. I have no idea to be honest. It doesn't feel like Wednesday. It feels like Tuesday, do you know what I mean, because we flew all through the day on Monday night and then got home on Monday night and flew up here yesterday.

Yeah, I can't believe I'm going to play Carnoustie at nine o'clock tomorrow morning to be perfectly honest. It's going to be hard to go out and play well, but I'm going to try my best. These are the weeks that maybe you do go out and play your best and have a chance to win the tournament at the end of it, but yeah.

Q. You've had a couple of days to let the dust settle. Is there anything changing your mind about last week about what happened personally and for the team?

SHANE LOWRY: I suppose I haven't thought about it that much. I thought about it quite a bit as well as on the way home Monday. I'm must so disappointed for Paddy to be honest. Yeah, really disappointed for him. I don't think he deserves the beating we got last week. It looks bad on paper obviously. Yeah, so it's hard because he's a very good friend, and that's what I'm most disappointed about last week is we didn't perform as a team for him.

But you know, as regards the week itself, I couldn't have envisaged what it would be like for me. It was amazing. It was one of the best experiences of my life, and it's the only thing I want to do for the next two years. I don't care what I do for the next two years now as long as I'm back in Rome to try to take the trophy back off them.

Q. You are known for dealing with things as a humorous touch. When you had a bit of personal abuse, did it actually worry you or were you able to shrug it off? How bad was it? There seemed to be a divergence of opinion of how bad the booing was.

SHANE LOWRY: Yeah, I didn't think -- look, I didn't think it was that bad until I asked my wife what it was like for her, and they got abuse coming around as well. So it was like, it's not very nice is it, and it's not very nice for them to have to listen to this. But that's a small percentage of the crowd.

The majority of the crowd, I finished my match on 16 on Sunday and I was walking back down to and follow the other groups and I got a huge ovation off the crowd and in the grandstand on 16, that was pretty cool. And I thought I get on well with the crowd last week as best I could.

But they are obviously a home crowd and they are going to be a partisan crowd. But some of the stuff is not very nice. But look, that's just the way it is. Some people are idiots, especially when they drink. Nobody turns into a genius drinking, and that's what they were doing last week. Especially if you were out in the afternoon matches, it was loud.

It was hard for us. As a team it was hard for us to perform our best because, you know, no matter what you say, you stand up and you hit a 3-iron into ten feet from 250 yards and you don't even get a ripple of applause. You almost get booed for it. It's hard.

But I tried to take it as best I could. I think I did. I think I performed okay. And yeah, it wasn't -- look, it is what it is. I don't think it's going to be like that in Rome. We will obviously have the home support, but we'll be hopefully winning a bit of a different way.

Q. So it didn't sort of go deep, the remarks?

SHANE LOWRY: No, no. I don't take -- no. No really care what people think about me to be honest, like other than my people close to me.

Q. I suppose the big question this week is: Have you got enough petrol?

SHANE LOWRY: Yeah, I was actually looking yesterday at the tank, I hope I don't run out of it because I don't fancy queueing for 45 minutes for petrol.

Q. You told us there was a great in-joke Sunday night about what went on in the team room before Sunday night. Is there anything you can tell us about the celebrations or otherwise on Sunday?

SHANE LOWRY: About the celebrations, as always, the party ended up in the European Team team room. It's always most fun in there. But no, look, we had a few drinks and the Americans come in and we chatted about the week or whatever. It was nice. It was a good night. Obviously we had an early start then Monday morning.

Look, I was very disappointed but yeah, we all got together and we tried to celebrate the week we just had even though it wasn't the week we would have liked.

Q. You're probably exhausted, combination of exhausted and adrenaline, did you give any thought to not playing this week?

SHANE LOWRY: Actually, I didn't. I asked Gerry, my amateur partner, if he was going to play and as long as he was going to play, I was going to come back and play. I'm here now. I'm going to try to go hit a few balls after this, and yeah, we'll see how it goes tomorrow.