LOCAL HERO

THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP RETURNS TO ROYAL PORTRUSH THIS YEAR. SO WILL SHANE LOWRY, THE RANGY, BEARDED IRISHMAN WHO, IN 2019, BECAME THE FAIRY-TALE CHAMPION GOLFER OF THE YEAR—AND, WITH A CLARET JUG FULL OF JAMESON, THE TOAST OF ALL IRELAND.

- BY DYLAN DETHIER

SHANE LOWRY IS SITTING ON A BALCONY IN DUBLIN. GAZING INTO THE PAST.

It’s a cool, breezy, overcast May morning. Dark clouds threaten overhead. “Irish weather,” Lowry says with a grin, even though this is Dublin, Ohio, site of this week’s Memorial Tournament, rather than his home country’s capital city. He’s cradling a bottle of Diet Coke. No matter that it’s a tick shy of 10 a.m., there was a twinkle in his eye when I gifted him his energy drink of choice—and a flash of disappointment. “Can’s the proper way to drink a Diet Coke,” he says, stated as irrefutable fact.

He’s in full pro-golf regalia: white shirt, white hat, easy smile. He looks trim—“I have been working hard on that,” he says sheepishly—and feels good, though I’m second-guessing our outdoor location as he flicks the first raindrop from his wrist. Everyone assumes this is his preferred climate—chill and wind and drizzle—no matter how often he points out that he and his family have lived in South Florida for a half decade.

But Lowry is Irish golf, because of what he’s done, where he’s won and how he’s gone about it—fervent and fiery inside the ropes, candid and contemplative everywhere else. And so even as we sit beside the clubhouse at the Memorial Tournament—hosted every year at Jack Nicklaus’ Muirfield Village Golf Club—his thoughts and mine go to rainy golf days gone by, to County Offaly and County Louth and County Antrim, and his imminent summer return to Ireland. As conquering hero.

THE MOST INCREDIBLE THING about Lowry winning Ireland’s most momentous golf tournament—the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush—in storybook fashion is that, a decade before, he’d done almost the same thing.