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Every day’s a school day for Open champion Shane Lowry

Shane Lowry celebrates with his wife and daughter

Royal Portrush hero shoots impressive opening 3-under 67 at The Honda Classic in Florida and then dashes to pick daughter up from school

Shane Lowry didn't head to the range after finishing his morning round at The Honda Classic at Palm Beach Gardens.

Looking at his scorecard, it would be easy to think he had no need to. After all, a fine 3-under-par 67 in windy conditions was a more than acceptable way to start his bid for a first win since memorably capturing the Claret Jug at Royal Portrush in 2019.

Lowry admitted, though, that he hadn't been wholly satisfied with his game, hinting that some tweaks were needed.
But the Irishman wasn't going to sort them there and then. No, he had other business to attend to: it was time to do the school run.
Lowry, wife Wendy and daughter Iris live just five minutes from this week's venue at PGA National.
They moved to Palm Beach a couple of years ago to cut down on travel time and decided to stay there when the PGA Tour announced its plan to resume competition last June.

And a morning tee-time in round one on Thursday meant Lowry finished his day early and could switch golf cap for dad hat and go and pick up Iris from school.

Lowry The Golfer

"Any time you shoot under par on this course you're pretty happy. The wind actually got up pretty early today," said Lowry after completing his morning lap.
"When we made it to like 14, the fifth or sixth hole, it started to get up. It's just so hard, so tricky. There's a lot of disaster holes.
"Whatever (leader) Matt Jones is doing, I want to see it because 61 out there is incredible. That's just incredible. But I'm very happy with my 67.
"I obviously had a nice week at THE PLAYERS last week. I felt like I put it out there three out of four days. It's my long game that I don't feel overly comfortable with.
"I mean, I missed a few fairways today but I was missing them in the right spots, and luckily this year there's not much rough here, and you can kind of get away with that a little bit. Yeah, I'm just kind of, just keep going, keep plugging away.

"I feel like I've found something in my putting that I can work on and improve on, so hopefully I can keep getting better and keep shooting some decent scores."

A 25/1 chance pre-tournament, Lowry was cut to just 12/1 with Paddy Power after making an early impression on the leaderboard.

Stats from round one

Score: 3-under 67 - four birdies, one bogey, 13 pars

Fairways hit: 5 of 14

Greens In Regulation: 11 of 18

Sand Saves: 1 out of 1

Scrambling: 85.71%

Putts per GIR: 1.727

Lowry The Dad

While living so close to the course is a big help logistically, Lowry doesn't think the easier routine will translate into an inevitable improvement in performance.

"Yeah, it's actually strange. It's lovely, but I'm not really sure it helps a whole lot because it's just -- I suppose it's different," he said.
"You're staying at home in your own bed and I've got my family there, but they travel with me a lot anyway.
"Like they still have their life going on this week, like I'm heading out to pick my daughter up from school. You know what I mean? I'm playing golf this week and I'm working, but I've got my normal weekly routine, as well.
"It is nice to be here, though, because this is a home game for me because we've moved down here, so yeah, it's nice."
And as for the school run: "I'm looking forward to seeing her. We'll play and I'm sure we'll have a good afternoon, so it'll be nice."

READ MORE: Shane Lowry taking Westwood lads-and-dads route to the Honda Classic

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