ABU DHABI HSBC GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP

January 19, 2023

Shane Lowry

Yas Links

Quick Quotes

Q. Opening round of 5-under par 67. What's your thoughts on that one?

SHANE LOWRY: I'm pretty happy to be honest. I obviously played The Hero Cup last week, and I didn't play as well or make as many points as I would have liked.

You're coming out here, first round of the year with a scorecard in your pocket; you don't really know how it's going to go. Good to get out and play some good golf, and to hole some putts toward the end was nice.

Q. Talking about the Hero Cup, you loved playing in a team environment. Give us some insight into that.

SHANE LOWRY: Yeah, obviously I played the last Ryder Cup, and that was a great learning experience and great experience for me.

Being part of The Hero Cup last week, even playing fourballs and foursomes again, I didn't play foursomes the last Ryder Cup, so I got to play last week. You just learn things maybe in myself and Tommy and in our fourball match, we were a little too aggressive and need to keep balls in play. Little things that might help new September if I'm there.

Learned a lot about myself and learned a lot about the team environment again. It was a great week. I thought the Tour did a great job, and I thought Hero put on a great tournament. I was pretty happy what I got from the week apart from the result. I said at the end of the week, everything was great apart from the result obviously.

Q. You mentioned it was important not to suffer from a loss of confidence. Presumably today's round puts that to bed?

SHANE LOWRY: I think so. I look back on Sunday against Fran, he just outscored me. Felt like I played pretty well and put him under a lot of pressure when I needed to, and he just holed a couple of good putts at the right time. And before you know it, you're a couple down with a couple to play and you're behind the 8-ball.

It was important not to lose too much confidence from last week, and it's important to get this year off to a good start. I feel like I did that today.