BMW CHAMPIONSHIP

August 18, 2022

Shane Lowry

Wilmington Country Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Shane, I know it's not the way you wanted to finish, but 5-under par in your opening round. What's your assessment of your opening round?

SHANE LOWRY: Yeah, it's nice. I'm pretty happy. Obviously a smelly finish, and lunch is not going to taste as nice after that. But I feel like over the last month or so, even most of the summer, that I've been struggling to get off to good starts in tournaments, and I've been playing my way back into them, but I've been grinding all week to do that. It was nice to shoot 5-under today and kind of get myself in the tournament pretty quickly.

Hopefully I can go out and keep playing the golf I am and keep shooting good scores and give myself a chance this weekend.

Q. Do you maybe know what the problem was in those opening couple rounds during that time?

SHANE LOWRY: No, that's the thing. You don't really know. It was never that far away. I wasn't shooting horrific scores or anything, I was just shooting pretty average scores, around level par, 1-under, 1-over. It just wasn't great. That doesn't cut it on this tour.

Yeah, it's nice to go out there and shoot a low number today, and like I said, hopefully I can keep going tomorrow.

Q. After just a couple days of prep work here, how did you find the course playing today?

SHANE LOWRY: Yeah, it's good. It's quite long and it's not intimidating, but you kind of don't really know what the scoring is going to be like. I think the scoring is going to be pretty good. I think it's pretty similar to saves valley we played last year. The scoring was obviously -- I don't think it's going to be as low as that, but it's going to be not far off that. I think it's definitely going to be high teens to 20-under maybe this week, but who knows, you just have to keep going, make your birdies when you get your chances, and try and make as few bogeys as possible, and that's what I did today.

Q. Do you keep in the back of your mind what you have to do to advance to East Lake?

SHANE LOWRY: I was actually thinking about that on the course today for some strange reason my mind wanders a lot. I think I just need to focus on trying to win this tournament and trying to do well in this tournament. Look, I'd love to get to East Lake, but I also want to get to East Lake with a chance to kind of do something special. If I wanted to do that, I need to do something very good this week, so I need a really good finish this week, and hopefully that will put me not too far off the leader going into next week, and then you never know what could happen.

Q. Would you walk us through the long putt you made on 14?

SHANE LOWRY: Yeah, it was just one of those, I like putting on greens like this with a lot of slope in them because you kind of have to be a lot more instinctive and kind of putt with a bit more feel. Yeah, it was just one of those where you just get it to the top of the hill and hopefully the momentum takes it down. Yeah, it was pretty nice to hole a putt like that. It's been a few weeks since I've holed a long one like that, so I was pretty happy.