A case of onwards and upwards, as the man himself so often likes to portray his journey, from here on in for Shane Lowry. And, certainly, his future – as a rejuvenated 39-year-old – looks set to feature a smoother ride going forward rather than the self-described “minor speed bumps” which affected his confidence through much of the PGA Tour season.

Lowry’s impressive, runaway victory in the Amgen Irish Open at Trump International in Doonbeg earned him a seventh career win on the DP World Tour and came with numerous benefits, not least elevating him to the top of Europe’s Ryder Cup standings for the defence of the trophy against the United States at Adare Manor on September 13th-19th, 2027.

As it happened, captain Luke Donald had planned a get-together on Monday at the Co Limerick resort of a number of players from last year’s match at Bethpage along with a number of young potential team members, before heading over to London for this week’s BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.

Lowry was among those in attendance, with the most notable absentee being Rory McIlroy, who had headed over to his new home in Wentworth on Sunday night to be with his wife Erica and daughter Poppy.

“It goes without saying, the next 12 months, the Masters, the PGA, the US Open, The Open, and then the Ryder Cup, that’s what the season is going to revolve around,” admitted Lowry. “I’d love to be a part of a winning team at Adare, and I think a lot of my work and a lot of the reason why I get up in the morning over the next 12 months will be to be part of a winning team there. This has been a good start.”

The Ryder Cup qualifying for Adare Manor started at the British Masters and will conclude on Sunday August 22nd, 2027, which means the Irish Open will be a double-counting event. Next year’s centenary edition of the tournament will return to The K Club in the end of June/start of July slot ahead of the Scottish Open and The Open.

For Lowry, making that Ryder Cup team on home turf, especially after his heroics in Bethpage last year, is circled in his calendar, but the manner of his win in Doonbeg – where he used his putter to great effect – provided evidence of yet more to come in a career which was kick-started with his win in the 2009 Irish Open as an amateur.

“I still feel like I’ve got a lot to give. This year has been hard but you have to go through the tough times. And [my team] kept on saying the last few weeks, ‘this is just a minor speed bump in the career, it’s nothing really’.

“And if you look at it and break it down, there’s a couple of bad things happened, but it’s not been unbelievably bad. I’ve not been missing loads of cuts. I’ve not been shooting really high scores. I’ve just not been myself. And I was back to myself this week, and it was really enjoyable.”

Lowry also revealed he had made an adjustment to the shaft of his Spider putter. “People mightn’t have noticed. It’s a different shaft in it. That might have helped. The neck is different on my putter, it’s face balanced instead of toe open. It worked. First week out, it worked.”

And Lowry also had praise for his coach Neil Manchip, explaining: “He’s not only my coach, he’s the person I talk to about everything. He probably knows more about me than I do myself. He’s very important. He just keeps me going. He keeps me believing. Like he always says to me, ‘you’re still going to do great things’. He believes I’m going to win more Majors. He believes I’m going to do more great things in the game. If people keep saying that to you, it does rub off on you. It’s good to have good people around you.”

Others, too, had taken the time to talk to him, especially after his late collapse in the Cognizant on the PGA earlier this year.

One of them was McIlroy.

“Everyone learns at different rates or takes different things away from different circumstances,” revealed McIlroy, adding: “I said to Shane, ‘in 2014, I had a four-shot lead at the Cognizant, lost in a playoff and then ended up winning two Majors that year. Don’t let one bad result get to you’. Sometimes it’s hard not to let it get to you and it knocks your confidence a little bit.

“But he’s been chipping away and he’s slowly getting himself back into some really good form. Obviously, a combination of this week [in Doonbeg] where he’s played well, fed off the crowd … [it’s] a great way to get everything back on track.”

Lowry’s win in the Irish Open improved his official world ranking from 53rd up to 41st, just 0.004 average points behind Michael Thorbjornsen in 40th. The significance of that jump is that it moved Lowry inside the top 50 who will receive those precious Masters invitations in the post from Augusta National.