Irish eyes smiled upon TPC Louisiana on Sunday, as Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry prevailed in a playoff to win the Zurich Classic of New Orleans in McIlroy’s debut at the team tournament in Avondale, La.
McIlroy, the four-time major champ from Northern Ireland, and Lowry, his friend, fellow major winner and former Ryder Cup teammate from Ireland, put the Zurich on their schedule hoping to use it to jump up the FedEx Cup standings. They’ll each receive 400 FedEx Cup points after defeating Chad Ramey and France’s Martin Trainer on the first playoff hole.
It marked McIlroy’s 25th PGA Tour win and Lowry’s third; Lowry had not won on U.S. soil since August 2015. McIlroy dubbed his first trip to New Orleans “absolutely amazing.”
“To win any PGA Tour event is very cool,” McIlroy said, “but to do it with one of your closest friends, we’ve known each other for a long, long time, probably like over 20 years, so to think about where we met and where we’ve come from, to be on this stage and do this together, really, really cool journey that we’ve been a part of.”
After starting the day seven shots off the lead, Ramey and Trainer fired a 9-under 63 in Sunday’s round of foursomes (alternate shot) to head to the clubhouse at 25-under 263. Other teams in the 25-under range soon wobbled and fell back — including McIlroy and Lowry, for a brief time, before they rebounded from a bogey at No. 17 with a birdie at the par-5 18th hole to force the playoff.
They returned to the 18th tee to begin the playoff, and Ramey’s second shot hooked left over the gallery. Trainer couldn’t hit his third shot hard enough onto the green. Meanwhile, Lowry put his team in the bunker on the second shot but McIlroy made a nice recovery shot — similar to his pitch shot on the 72nd hole that set up Lowry’s 5-foot birdie that forced the playoff.
Lowry’s birdie try in the playoff came to rest inches right of the cup, but Trainer pushed his short par putt that would have extended the playoff.
“You seen the drive (McIlroy) hit up the 18th, the 72nd hole,” Lowry said. “When you’ve got him doing that, it’s pretty easy to play golf from there for me. I made it look hard at times, but no, it was amazing. We went out there, we had loads of fun and we won the tournament. You couldn’t ask for a better week.”
The Irish team recovered from a bogey-birdie-bogey start to finish with seven birdies, including four in a five-hole span at Nos. 7-11.
They also had the advantage of rolling straight into the playoff, while Ramey and Trainer had to wait and stay loose while the rest of the field finished.
“I feel for Martin and Chad a little bit,” McIlroy said. “They played an unbelievable round of golf. To shoot 63 out there in those conditions in foursomes is super impressive. Yeah, to be sitting around and not really knowing — they might be in a playoff, they might not be, and then I’m sure they obviously had time to warm up and everything, but still, it’s different than us just coming straight back off the golf course and straight back into it.”
Ramey and Trainer, each of whom has just one win in their tour careers, were 1 under through six holes before they birdied Nos. 7 and 8. They carried that momentum onto the back nine and rolled in five straight birdies from Nos. 10-14; they finished with 11 birdies and two bogeys before the playoff.
“Obviously disappointed we didn’t come out with the win,” Ramey said. “Like I told somebody earlier, there’s a lot of really good things to take from this week, and that’s what I’m going to do. Solo second finish in the end is still pretty good.”
Ryan Brehm and Mark Hubbard shot a 69 and finished one shot out of the playoff after closing with four straight pars. Brehm missed a must-have birdie at No. 18.
The team of Zac Blair and Patrick Fishburn also had their chances after shooting 60 on Saturday to take the 54-hole lead. Blair and Fishburn were done in Sunday by a pair of double bogeys at the par-3 ninth and 17th holes to drop them from the co-lead at 25 under to 23 under.
They shot 72 and tied for fourth at 23-under 265 with the teams of Sam Stevens and France’s Paul Barjon (64); South African Garrick Higgo and New Zealand’s Ryan Fox (65); and Max Greyserman and Colombia’s Nico Echavarria (69).
–Field Level Media
