The Homegrown Heroes

Rory and Shane, Shane and Rory. If you were making a buddy movie about professional golfers you couldn’t come up with a better duo. McIlroy is an all-time talent, intense and sometimes edgy, a golfing romantic, a voracious reader prone to introspection and occasional bouts of ennui. Lowry towers over his friend, his red beard and deep laugh turning him into Ireland personified. He has a set of hands as good as his Hall of Fame-bound pal and, though he never makes grand pronouncements about his place in history a la Rory, Shane is deeply prideful. Together they have turned into golf’s Batman and Robin, side-by-side in a near Ryder Cup brawl in a parking lot in Rome, on a stage in New Orleans belting out Journey after winning the Zurich Classic together, clinking glasses as they travel the world in McIlroy’s G-VI; Lowry flies for free and to show his gratitude always brings a couple bottles of expensive wine. “He can drink more than me!” says Lowry, who in private often refers to McIlroy as “the little fooker.”

As Rory made his unforgettable walk from the 18th green at Augusta National to the scoring area, his face was like a movie screen playing out a lifetime of memories, heartbreaks and triumphs. His eyes went soft and he broke out in a big grin when he saw Lowry, who wrapped the newly minted Masters champ in a bear hug. “It can be lonely at the top and I think it is for Rory,” says Paul McGinley, the grand old man of Irish golf. “He doesn't have a lot of really close friends. He's got his team, but outside of that he's got lots of acquaintances. He doesn't have a lot of really close friends on Tour. That’s why Shane means so much to him.”

This week Rory and Shane will be the co-headliners at the Open Championship at Royal Portrush. Lowry is the de facto defending champion, having prevailed at the Open on this epic links in 2019. McIlroy is the prodigal son, returning home to try to find himself again as he enters the last act of a highly eventful career.

Six years ago at Portrush he suffered a signature disappointment, hooking his opening tee shot out-of-bounds and making a quadruple bogey. “He had waited his whole life to hit that tee shot and to see it sailing left, that was tough,” says Gary Woodland, McIlroy’s playing partner that day. “I was deflated for him, the crowd was deflated. You had to feel for him.”

The homegrown heroes put the heart into that Open. Graeme McDowell shed a tear on the 1st tee on Thursday morning, the Open having returned to his hometown for the first time in 68 years. Another Northern Irish lad, Darren Clarke, was the toast of the town until he botched the 36th hole to miss the cut. On Friday, McIlroy was one of the last players on the course and the entire Irish island tried to will him to make the cut after his ghastly opening 79. Once the birdies started flying, “It was the most electric Friday atmosphere I’ve seen in 17 years on Tour,” says Woodland. “It was a crazy change in emotion from Thursday to Friday.” When McIlroy fell one shot short

A whole nation cried along with him. It was a reminder that “luck of the Irish” is meant to be ironic.

But Lowry changed the mood on Saturday with a dazzling 63 that gave him a four-stroke lead. He was carried home on the closing holes with joyous singing that lasted long past the final putt, an instantly iconic scene. What kind of bloke is Lowry? When he came to Portrush to scout the course ahead of the tournament he showed up in the pro shop carrying “tray bakes”—homemade goodies for the staff. “Caramel squares, rice crispy buns, some chocolatey thing…” said Royal Portrush assistant pro Charlene Reid in a dreamy tone. “That’s not the only reason we love Shane around here, but it didn’t hurt!”

You had to love the statement he made during the final round, sauntering around Portrush in short sleeves in by far the nastiest weather of the week. This kind of machismo is usually reserved for offensive lineman displaying naked arms when it’s snowing in Green Bay. As Lowry played the first hole, in the gallery down the right side of the fairway, four tri-colored flags from the Republic of Ireland fluttered. In another context, here in the dark green heart of Northern Ireland, this could be a provocation. Instead, it was a celebration of the man who was suddenly a favorite son. Golf is the only shared religion on an island that has seen centuries of bloodshed between Catholics and Protestants. What the stick-to-sports crowd doesn’t get is that athletic fields offer some of our most powerful symbolism. Hitler understood this with his bombastic staging of the 1936 Olympics, and Jesse Owens’s subsequent brilliance was an eloquent statement on the equality of all men. From Tommie Smith’s and John Carlos’s raised fists to Colin Kaepernick’s bended knee, Muhammed Ali’s stance on the Vietnam War to George W. Bush’s ceremonial first pitch in Yankees Stadium in the days after 9/11, sports is the ultimate arena for bringing us together or protesting what tears us apart. “Today there’s not a Northern Ireland and an Ireland,” McDowell said following his final round in ‘19. “Shane has united us all. There’s not a person on this island who isn’t pulling hard for him to get across the line.”

Lowry’s spectacular victory meant so much to so many but it was a deeply personal triumph for a player who had long been cast as Rory’s jolly big brother. They came up together through the Irish Golf Union, Lowry two years older and a head taller. It was a stroke of good fortune that the precocious McIlroy had another world-class talent to train alongside. The GUI occasionally imported top teachers for clinics, which is how Pete Cowen first encountered Rory and Shane in their early teens. “They pushed and pulled each other,” says Cowen, who over the years has ministered to practically every top European pro. “It was a friendly rivalry. Very friendly, but still a rivalry.”

Rory and Shane first tasted victory together representing Ireland at the 2007 European Amateur Team Championship; McIlroy was the individual champion in the stroke-play portion and Ireland defeated France in the final to claim its first victory in the championship since 1987. In 2009 they announced their intentions to the larger golf world: McIlroy, in his second full season on the European Tour, won his first pro event in Dubai and Lowry took the Irish Open while still an amateur. Rory was among those who crowded the final green to dole out a hug.

But like any long-term relationship, Rory and Shane have had their challenges. In 2011, following his game-changing blowout win at the U.S. Open, McIlroy jilted his agent Chubby Chandler and came to Conor Ridge’s Horizon Sports, where Lowry and McDowell would be his stablemates. Ridge negotiated a handful of blue-chip deals for McIlroy, including his first Nike contract, but the partnership was short-lived: by the end of 2013, McIlroy and Horizon were suing each other and Lowry got caught in the crossfire. “It was a shitshow, because Conor has always been good to me and it was almost as if I had to pick a side, so I was in a tough place with Rory,” Lowry told Paul Kimmage of the Belfast Telegraph. “We went from friends to being acquaintances and it was just ... awkward. I mean, I’m ‘L’ and he’s ‘M’ and our lockers were beside each other at every tournament! I hate talking about it, and to be honest I’m happy Rory is not sitting here because I remember a practice round in Carnoustie before the [2014] Dunhill and seeing him on the tee, and waiting in the clubhouse until he was gone, which is bullshit when you think about it. I mean for fook sake! Just shite!”

The relationship didn’t fully heal until 2019, over a couples’ dinner when Erica McIlroy and Wendy Lowry hit it off famously, forcing their hubbys to become chummy again. The bond intensified when Poppy McIlroy was born in 2020. The Lowrys had two young daughters and the girls would grow up together, strangers in a strange land: South Florida. “You put together two Irishmen anywhere in the world, they’re going to get on with each other,” says Padraig Harrington. “That’s just the way it is.”

Does it matter if one is from the north and one is from the south?

“Not one bit. They’re going to talk and they’re going to laugh and they might drink.”

They also began practicing together at the Bear’s Club and Lowry’s game blossomed. “When Shane moved over to Palm Beach, initially he was out of his depth,” says McGinley. “He was a country lad from Ireland trying to make his way on the PGA TOUR with a new wife and young kids. Talk about a duck out of water. He was lost and his performances on the PGA TOUR showed that. When the friendship with Rory ignited, so did Shane’s game. Being around the greatest player of his generation has pushed Shane to make the most of his massive talent.”

Lowry has always been protective of his friend and the world got a taste of that at the 2023 Ryder Cup. McIlroy was riled up by U.S. caddie Joe LaCava’s disrespectful celebration on the 18th green as Rory was lining up a crucial putt in the Saturday fourballs. Lowry interceded and told LaCava to, uh, step off. After McIlroy missed his putt and Europe lost the match, tensions escalated in the team room. “Shane's passionate, you know?” says European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald. “He was shouting in the locker room—well, I don’t want to say shouting. He was raising his voice: ‘That was bullshit, and blah, blah, blah.’ I don’t think Rory quite contemplated everything while it was going on there on the green but once he heard Shane he was like, ‘Yeah, you’re right!” McIlroy felt “the red mist” upon him and told Lowry he wanted to go into the American team to sort things out, Dirty Harry-style. He got talked out of that but, as Rory and Shane left the clubhouse, Jim (Bones) Mackay, LaCava’s old buddy, had the misfortune to cross paths with them. Bones tried to be conciliatory but McIlroy saw his stars and stripes and something broke inside of him. He shouted at Bones, “That can’t fucking happen! That’s a fucking disgrace!” As Lowry held him back, McIlroy thundered, “I’m going to go in that fucking team room!” Shane ultimately tossed Rory into the backseat of a courtesy car. Back at the hotel they took cold plunges to cool down their emotions. Video of the confrontation went around the sports world at the speed of light and Lowry was widely celebrated for being his brother’s keeper. (He later joked he was keen to avoid a brawl alongside McIlroy because he would’ve had to do all the work.) The next day Rory radiated a seething intensity while dispatching Sam Burns in singles as Europe took the Cup.

Shane and Rory were at it again as a two-man team at last year’s Zurich Classic. Lowry was struggling a little bit with his game but McIlroy carried them into contention. In the third round they played with Aaron Rai and David Lipsky. “It was very lighthearted between them, great banter between shots,” says Rai. “You could tell it was a deep bond. When you play amateur golf together, it’s a little simpler than professional golf. It’s a smaller group, you’re all chasing the same things, it creates deep relationships that last.”

Still, Rai could feel how hard Lowry was trying to not let down his partner. “He was definitely grinding harder than Rory,” says Rai. “You could tell Shane wanted to do it more for Rory than himself.” Following the third round, McIlroy and Lowry dined at Arnaud’s in the French Quarter and as they got up to leave their fellow diners offered a standing ovation. On the final green the next day, Lowry, in victory, picked up McIlroy like a schoolboy and shouted in tribute, “Ye little fooker!” They turned up at the victory party wearing Mardi Gras beads and holding bottles of beer. As McIlroy belted out Don’t Stop Believin’, a fan tossed the tri-color at Lowry’s feet. He’s a proud Irishman and in almost any other scenario would have draped himself in the flag. But in deference to McIlroy, he left it on the stage floor.

Issues of identity will be an inevitable backdrop to the Open at Portrush but the leading men are motivated by the personal, not the political. After a handful of high-profile disappointments, Lowry is looking to confirm his place in the pantheon with one more major championship victory. McIlroy has nothing left to prove—his post-Masters existential crisis has been about trying to understand his purpose now that he has achieved all of his dreams. But lately he’s started to look and sound more like himself. McIlroy conveyed his old lightness of being at last week’s Scottish Open and his strong tie for second affirmed his standing as one of the favorites for the Open. He certainly has unfinished business with Royal Portrush, where his legend began with a course-record 61 when he was 16. McGinley sounds a warning to the competition:

“When his heart is engaged in something, and it really means something to him, he generally delivers. And then he goes into these flat periods in his career— he's had lots of them. It's an Irish thing to be melancholy, and he goes into these periods of melancholy, but it's not that he's not caring, it's almost like he’s in a slumber. And then all of a sudden he ignites. And when that heart goes on fire, that's when he comes out and does something that amazes us. If he has that quiet look of determination combined with that joyfulness of chasing a goal, that’s when the magic happens.”

Portrush may or may not add another thrilling chapter to Rory and Shane’s friendship. Only one thing is certain: if one of them wins this Open, we know with whom he will be drinking on Sunday night.

More from Alan Shipnuck on Skratch:

J.J. Spaun, 64 Feet, and the Men in the Sky

The Shadows That Follow Angel Cabrera

Now, Watch This