Shane Lowry made gesture to Rory McIlroy after | Golf News

Shane Lowry stayed behind to congratulate his close good friend Rory McIlroy after the latter claimed his second Green Jacket at Augusta National.

Lowry and McIlroy are long-time mates, having competed together for the European Ryder Cup crew over the years, and the 39-year-old remained at Augusta National to be among the first to embrace the six-time major champion.

Lowry did the same the yr before when McIlroy accomplished his profession Grand Slam without his dad and mom in attendance. This time around, Lowry slipped down the leaderboard and out of rivalry after carding an eight-over 80 in the ultimate spherical.

“Good things come to those who wait, maybe,” said McIlroy on what he discovered from Augusta National.

“Just keep going. I find myself in a very similar position today to where I was in the last round last year, two or three behind, but I played solid golf after that.

“I used to be 4-under for an 11-hole stretch there, which is what I needed to do to give myself that cushion going up the last. I just tried actually exhausting to focus on myself. I assumed, if I may get to 14-under, I assumed that everybody else would battle to get to that rating. So that was the quantity I had in my head. I acquired to 13 on the last and had that two-shot cushion.

“I didn’t quite get there, but yeah, just keep going. Keep your head down and keep it going. If you put the hours in and work on the right things, eventually it will come good for you.”

McIlroy went on to describe how Augusta National’s secretive nature leaves an excessive amount of room for self-doubt and anxiety to take maintain. “It’s very — you have a lot of time to think,” said McIlroy. “You’re out there a long time. There’s a long time between shots. There’s a long time between rounds.

“I feel it’s – of all the big sports activities, I do suppose it’s the most mental. It’s the most difficult mentally. I feel it is exhausting to keep in the same mental space for 4 days in a row because even – I used to be in a great mental space, like say on the thirteenth tee shot, for instance. All of my observe rounds up right here, the weeks main into it, Monday, Tuesday, great. I hit two left on Wednesday off the tee. Then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I did not sniff hitting the green.

“So it’s just there’s little things that happen that just start to make you second guess things. It’s just very hard to stay on the right — not in the right spot mentally, but the same spot mentally for a long period of time.”