What began as a celebratory lunch between Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry late last year to toast their Ryder Cup victory led to another celebratory week as the two Irishmen teamed for a playoff victory Sunday in the Zurich Classic of New Orleans.
The subject of playing together at TPC Louisiana was raised at the lunch and reconfirmed around Christmas and it paid off with McIlroy’s 25th PGA Tour victory and Lowry’s first tournament win since the BMW PGA Championship in 2022.
McIlroy and Lowry, who finished at 25-under-par 263, won with a par on the first extra hole when Chad Ramey and Martin Trainer, who tied a tournament record by shooting 9-under 63 in the alternate-shot format, made a bogey after waiting approximately three hours for play to conclude after their early finish.
“We’ve had an awesome week. I feel like it's just a bonus to win at the end,” said McIlroy, who joined Tommy Armour, Johnny Miller and Macdonald Smith with 25 tour wins, tied for 23rd all time.
It was a striking contrast between the two teams in the playoff. McIlroy and Lowry have won five major championships while Ramey and Trainer had one combined tour victory and both ranked outside the top 130 in FedEx Cup points entering the week.
McIlroy and Lowry bogeyed the par-3 17th hole to fall one stroke behind but forced the playoff when Lowry made a 6-foot birdie putt on the final hole in regulation.
“We felt like coming into the week that we both could do with a big jump in the FedEx Cup, and we both said at the start of the week, let’s go and get 400 points each. That’s what we’ve done, and I nearly feel a little bit bad taking them because Rory carried me a lot of the way. But yeah, they’re mine, and they’re not going away,” Lowry said.
The lengthy wait showed for both Trainer and Ramey on the first extra hole. Ramey badly pulled his second shot into the par-5, leaving Trainer with a difficult pitch shot he chunked short of the green, leading to a costly bogey.
“Obviously golf is hard, and sometimes it doesn’t go your way,” Trainer said. “We did the best we could and had a chance, and that’s all you can ask for really.”
Mark Hubbard and Ryan Brehm pushed the issue until the final hole where, needing a birdie to join the playoff, they finished with a par. It was just Hubbard’s second top-five finish in more than 200 PGA Tour starts while Brehm ranks 517th in the world with seven missed cuts this season.
“Our main goal was to give ourselves a chance,” Brehm said. “That rarely happens in golf when you say, ‘Hey, we want to give ourselves a chance.’ Mark hit a great drive on 18 and I found myself with a 3-wood into the green, and I’m like, this is it, this is the chance we were looking for.
“Hit a great shot and Mark hit a great chip that held up and then hit a great putt that didn’t go in. You’ve just got to move on and really take a lot from it because I think it could be a confidence booster for both of us.”
It was a near miss for Zac Blair and Patrick Fishburn, who led late in the final round until they were done in by a double-bogey at the difficult par-3 17th, their second double bogey in the final round.
“I think either one of us would have signed up for a fourth place at the start of the week,” Blair said. “I had a baby on Monday, didn’t get down here until Wednesday, no practice rounds. It was kind of let’s go do our best, and Fish mentioned it, we both tried. It’s not like we were trying to do anything where we screwed up. That’s just part of golf.”
RESULTS
Ron Green Jr.