Shane Lowry begins his bid to win back-to-back major golf titles when he tees it up at the PGA Championship in California this afternoon.
The reigning Open champion found some form last weekend with a top-six finish in Memphis and goes out alongside US Open winner Gary Woodland and defending champion Brooks Koepka later.
Koepka yesterday tipped up Lowry as one of his main opponents at Harding Park this week, with the American aiming to secure a third successive victory in the event.
"Yeah, obviously, look, Brooks is standing here, and when he gets asked about someone, he's not going to speak badly of them," the Offaly man said of Koepka's comments.
"But no, I played a little bit with Brooks in lockdown, you know, when we were down in Florida at the Floridian and stuff. I obviously know Ricky Elliott quite well and Claude Harmon, and we just organized a few games, played with Stephen Grant and we had a good time.
"And it's great. It's nice to be able to play with some of the best players in the world, and I was fortunate enough to be able to do that during lockdown.
"But do I expect myself to be there on Sunday? Look, if I bring my best golf, I can there, but I try and lower expectations as much as I can on a week like this. I just try and go out tomorrow and worry about what I'm going to shoot tomorrow first, and you know, keep going from there.
"And the golf course itself, look, it's just a difficult golf course. It's probably quite similar to Bethpage where I think the guy who drives it in the fairway will also probably win, but you still need to hit it a decent distance. It is playing very long, like there's a couple of 500-yard holes where they're playing really, really long, especially if you get them back into the wind.
"Look, it's just going to be a bit of a slog out there, but I'm looking forward to it because I like weeks like this. I think it's mentally challenging. If I can get myself in a good frame of mind come tomorrow morning when I tee off, who knows what could happen."
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