‘God-like’ Shane Lowry puts on a divine show at an Irish Open like no other

Just when you thought you’d seen it all. But then again, we had a notion that this Irish Open would be like not very much we’d witnessed before, especially that moment when play was interrupted by a swarm of Chinooks. Usually it’s midges that are the chief airborne nuisance in these parts, so this was a whole new ball game. “We believe they herald the arrival of the president of the United States, Donald Trump,” said the voice in the Sky Golf commentary box, which was a reasonable guess, it being unlikely that it was, say, the Doonbeg milkman on his way. Shane Lowry and the rest of the lads took the interruption in good spirits, waiting patiently for the invasion to conclude, but Li Haotong appeared oblivious to the potential danger to his very being. Stuck in the rough at the second, armed with a lofted irony type thingie, he sent his ball in to the skies just as yet another chinook was flying by. For one moment, you feared his ball was going to down it. “I was hoping that was an optical illusion,” gulped David Howell, with the sound of a man who needed to rush to the toilet.READ MOREHaotong meant no harm, of course, but he was having one of those days. Haotong: “****!” Sky: “Sorry!” Haotong: “****!” Sky: “Sorry!” Haotong: “****! ****! ****!” Sky: “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!”The bulk of his expletives were uttered when his ball landed in a stream at the 10th, his efforts to play it out of said location only resulting in his paddling feet sending a surge of water which moved the ball. This, an official informed him, was a breach of Rule 9.4b, like we didn’t know that, so he received a penalty.Hugh Cahill and his companions Gary Murphy and John McHenry felt he was hard done by. “Ridiculous,” said Gary. “How does he control the water,” asked Hugh, “he’s not Jesus Christ.”We mention Haotong’s tribulations only to contrast them with the comfy spin Lowry had around the course over the four days. If Haotong wasn’t Jesus Christ, Lowry was, as Andrew Coltart concluded when he sank that putt on the 18th, “God-like”. Need it be said, then, he was the divine story of the week. And Hugh was having none of it on Saturday morning, when all the chat was about the arrival in Doonbeg of a certain other fella. “The attention is all on just one man,” he said, very firmly. “I am of course talking about Shane Lowry.” That was fair enough, although the fact that Trump had united Ireland only a couple of hours earlier surely deserved a mention?By the end of round three, with Trump watching on from his balcony, Sky’s statto machine put Lowry’s “probability of winning” percentage at 80.3 per cent. Quite how these figures are calculated, we don’t know. Like, where did the .3 per cent come from?Shane Lowry celebrates sinking his final putt to win the 2026 Irish Open at Trump International Golf Links in Doonbeg. Photograph: Warren Little/Getty Images But come Sunday, that probability was approaching 100 per cent, Lowry birdying the first having been greeted by Trump. By now, the surrealness of the occasion was hitting the 110-per-cent mark. “Obviously any time he moves, it’s a big operation,” said Hugh of the US president, which might have sounded like an unkind reference to his weight, but was, probably, more about the security requirements around the man. Trump was back on his balcony watching Lowry’s procession, accompanied by Patrick Reed later in the day, possibly the only man on earth to have lower likeability ratings. By then, Trump had spoken to the media at Doonbeg about windmills, Irish unification and the Strait of Hormuz, before turning his attention to the golf. So just a regular day in his life.Lowry’s appetite for birdies, meanwhile, was insatiable. He sank a big long curly one at the seventh, which prompted Paul McGinley to come out with the most Paul McGinley thing ever. “That is the one that moved Shane in to a different space in his own head.” Right.All the while, an unimpressed herd of cattle wandered around in the background, possibly mulling over RTÉ’s quiz question – “Which Rory won the 2025 Irish Open? McIlroy, Delap or Best?” – the scenery on view was a touch on the majestic side.Just the 11-stroke win for Lowry in the end. “That leader board, my God like, it’s just mad,” as he put it. And then Trump addressed the crowd, announcing he would remove tariffs from Irish whiskey. A regular sporting day, then.