Shane Lowry and his unexpected putter spree

RIDGELAND, S.C. – On a quiet Thursday afternoon in sleepy Bluffton, S.C., shoppers at the PGA TOUR Superstore experienced a bit of a surprise. Among the golf balls and bags and drivers and gadgets, there stood an Open Championship winner in their midst.

Shane Lowry made the 26-mile drive in order to find a new putter after his gamer had snapped in two pieces after a freak mishap on the ninth fairway in his opening round at THE CJ CUP in South Carolina. The putter wasn’t broken out of anger. Lowry hit his second shot onto the green at the ninth, grabbed his putter from a bag a bit too abruptly, and as it fell out of his hands to the earth, he tried to flip it back up with a gentle kick beneath the shaft.

“I caught it like right where the graphite meets the steel on those shafts, and it just snapped in half,” Lowry said on Friday afternoon, having just shot 4-under 67 with his most recent PGA Superstore purchase. “I was like, yeah, I had to like pick Matt Fitzpatrick off the ground from laughing. It was interesting.”

Congaree Golf Club is an ultra-private club that sits in a remote patch of South Carolina Lowcountry, 45 minutes or so from Savannah and about the same distance from Hilton Head. Odyssey, which makes the White Hot OG 2-ball that Lowry uses, had left the premises on Wednesday, as is customary for the equipment folks, but called ahead to the PGA TOUR Superstore in Bluffton to get a putter ready for Lowry.

The order was under the name of Lowry’s caddie, Beau Martin, so that’s who the folks in the shop figured they would see. But Lowry, in full golf gear with all his logos on his chest, joined his caddie on the putter purchase run.

“The customers were doing a couple double-takes,” Lowry said, smiling.

He had a little fun with his predicament, filming his time at the register, then posting the video on Twitter for the world to see. As of Friday afternoon, it had more than 230,000 views. The banter was terrific. He was just glad to have a familiar putter to use.

Thursday, he had putted two holes with the belly of a lob wedge before his agent, Brian Moran, went to the clubhouse, fetched a putter from a member’s bag, and brought it to Lowry on the 11th hole. Congaree has some of the fastest greens that TOUR players have seen all year, and Lowry said it was daunting trying to putt with a Scottie Cameron blade he never had tried before.

“It did OK,” he said. “I holed a couple of putts, but I missed a few coming in yesterday.”

Lowry shot 68 in his opening round. In case you are curious, the 2019 Open Champion, who won in his home country, did not get a discount at the PGA TOUR Superstore. He paid $229.99 for the putter that Odyssey had waiting for him, plus an extra $29.99 to put on a custom Traxion Pistol GT grip. By day’s end on Friday, Lowry could have opened his own putter shop. He had the one Odyssey ordered in his bag, the backup that he bought, as well as two or three more that Odyssey had shipped waiting in his locker.

All Lowry could do was smile and shrug his shoulders.

“There’s always something,” he said.