The morning breeze around Doonbeg was gentle but still it carried murmurs about Donald Trump’s intentions. Some thought he would rise early to see off Rory McIlroy, others swore he’d be out to see Brooks Koepka less than an hour later. Media gathered opposite the hotel door, their backs to the 18th green, waiting for another chance to open a diplomatic tinderbox and hand the president a match.
But Trump didn’t stir until lunchtime, which made him Shane Lowry’s problem. Eric Trump arrived at the first tee box at 1.47pm, quickly followed by Taoiseach Micheál Martin and his wife, Mary. Eric talked up the golf course during small talk while the White House snappers and TV crews went into position with precise choreography. A sniffer dog bounded along, straining at the end of its leash, briefly starting for a marshal before veering away. “Good job I don’t have the rashers in me pocket,” he said with a laugh. We chose not to ask the man in what scenario he usually carried rashers in his pockets, lest we draw any unwanted attention from the Secret Service agents.
Next we heard a “G’wan Donald” shouted from the grandstand. It emerged with such a guttural roar that we thought Trump had just shouldered a corner-forward out over the endline. The American president had just stepped out of the bulletproof golf buggy that had driven him the 200-odd metres from hotel to tee box. The buggy has been stoking fascination all week, nicknamed Clare Force One.
Trump strolled to that tee box in that usual languid slouch of his, telling us he hoped we had a good day. He was given a cheer by the grandstand and raised his fist in return. His roar, however, was several decibels lower than the crescendo of throaty roars that met Lowry’s appearance. Lowry first had to skirt by Clare Force One, which was plonked in his way, and then walk through a thicket of gardaí, armed agents, marshals, journalists, politicians and Trumps to get to the tee.
Having navigated all of these absurd hurdles, the tournament leader now needed only to get out of his own way.
He fumbled the Dubai Invitational on the final hole at the start of the year and then threw away a three-shot lead on the final three holes of the Cognizant Classic to fall into a slough of form from which he was unable to clamber out. This would be his first solo title in exactly four years, since winning the BMW PGA at Wentworth. That event was shortened to 54 holes. The last time he won a solo, 72-hole title was the 2019 Open in Portrush. On Sunday, just as on that glorious day seven years ago, he held a four-shot lead overnight.
And so Lowry distilled all of the mania around him into one pure hit of adrenaline that sent his tee shot 349 yards down the fairway. He strode off with his caddie and Donald Trump turned around to the media to return to his elephantine diplomacy.
While the president withdrew, Eric Trump followed Lowry down the fairway in the middle of a scuttling ring of secret service agents; his angular figure and long-limbed walk looking like a series of Quentin Blake illustrations coming alive in a flick picture book. “Trump’s son can’t be that old,” gasped one kid in the crowd when his father told him who he was looking at.
Shane Lowry laps the field to win a stunning second Irish Open by a record 11 shots
If there were any anxieties niggling at Lowry across the morning, he dispelled them all by rolling in a birdie putt from 16 feet on the first hole. It was a calling card. This was not the Shane Lowry that can let tournaments slip through red mist and sweaty palms. No, this was the steely-eyed version of Lowry that absorbs the whirling energy around him and lets it flow without distraction through him; as if it rolls down his loose shoulders and is returned to the crowds through his deft hands.
This was the unflappable Lowry of last year’s Ryder Cup, but where Bethpage convulsed with hostility, Doonbeg was rowdy with giddy adulation. The crowds clambering over dunes in pursuit of his every shot looked like rivers of lava; rope lines were treated as little more than suggestions. Crowds burst from cross walks and rushed up fairways, shuffling a couple of feet from the secret service agents encircling Eric Trump.
One marshal had to reconcile himself to vague threats to keep a group of fans from sprinting around a dune along the fourth fairway, telling them they couldn’t pass that way as it was designated a “country walk.” The biggest security operation in the history of the State, propped up by the phrase “country walk”.
Eric Trump whipped out his phone to record the crowning moment. The stage was the fifth green, with thousands of fans lassoed around vast, towering dunes as the Atlantic waves gurgled and crashed in the background. Lowry drained a birdie putt to go seven shots clear.
Trump the Younger left the action on the sixth tee, clearing space for Lowry’s procession. When he sank a putt for yet another birdie on the seventh green, Lowry raised his right arm and pointed to the sky, pumping his fist in what marked a brief parole from his locked-in focus. The next jailbreak came on the 15th, when he poured in a birdie from 45 feet. He threw his arms in the air and surrendered to the grin that broke across his face. The 18th fairway burst at the seams, a stampede of people charging after their imminent champion.
Lowry rolled in a final birdie putt to secure the record winning margin while he was at it. He beat his chest and roared a cathartic roar into the teatime sky. Amid the mass of humanity ringing the final green, it was possible for just a moment to forget that the American president was one among them. Such is sport’s confounding, restorative power. The copyright of this tournament was taken by the Trump Organisation, but its legacy belongs to Shane Lowry.