Almost on cue, the arrival of a cooler weather front - with intermittent morning rain and a fresh wind throughout the day - acted as something of a spoiler, certainly for the four home players in the field who’d hoped to make Saturday’s third round of the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open a traditional moving day.
It didn’t work out that way, however. Certainly not for the Big Two of Irish golf.
Indeed, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, despite the urgings of the crowd, laboured to the extent that their causes were done and dusted from an early juncture.
Ultimately, it was left to Cormac Sharvin - playing with a freshness of mind and body that has defied the consequences of a recent injury to his big toe which necessitated rest and rehab - and Graeme McDowell, who responded brilliantly from a three-bogey start, to throw any shapes.
Lucas Herbert kept on target to become the first wire-to-wire winner of the tournament since Mikko Illonen in 2014, as the 25-year-old Australian shot a 70 for a 54-holes total of 201 (15 under) which gave him a one stroke lead over American Johannes Veerman.
Sharvin, unsure if he would even be fit to play a number of weeks ago after injuring his toe after accidentally bashing it into a coffee table as he reached for a ringing phone, shot a third round 69 for a total of seven-under par 209, while McDowell signed for a 70 to sit on 211, five under.
An out-of-sorts Lowry struggled early on and failed to recover as he shot a 74 to slip down the field to lie on 213 at three under (in tied-57th place) and it wasn’t much better for McIlroy who ran up two double-bogeys, firstly at the fourth and then at the 16th after hitting his drive out-of-bounds, in a 73 for a six under par total of 212 (tied-49th).
“I basically have a lot of inflammation around the joint of the big toe. I don’t know the term but here’s some sort of small grisel. It’s getting better. I haven’t felt any pain the last three days and I felt pretty happy with that. I’ve done a good rehab over the last few weeks to get ready for this week,” explained Sharvin, who had the distinction of finishing as leading Irishman at Lahinch in 2019 (when he was tied-15th).
Sharvin’s three birdies, bogey-free round moved him up to tied-21st at the end of the third round and an even lower final round would be required to get that ambition of a top-10 or better, with three places on offer to the British Open available at Royal St Georges in a fortnight’s time also a worthwhile pursuit.
“I’ve just got to stick to my process. I’ve been hitting the ball really nicely the last few days so I’ve got to keep doing what I’m doing, picking small targets and committing to shots and see where that takes me,” said Sharvin.
McDowell, for his part, again showed his fighting spirit. His round could have been irrevocably damaged after a bogey-bogey-bogey start but he battled back wonderfully with five birdies and no further dropped shots to lie in tied-35th.
“It was nice to steady the ship, to make some birdies, make some putts and keep myself in touch to have a good day tomorrow and hopefully try and post a decent finish . . . . today, if it got away from me, it would have been disappointing but I can go into a Sunday and try to post a low round and get myself ready for the Scottish Open,” said McDowell.
Of getting to play four rounds with a card in his hand for the first time since the Valero Texas Open back in March, McDowell remarked: “I’m seeing every round as an opportunity right now to start building my confidence back a little bit again. If I had missed that cut yesterday one o’clock Friday afternoon and I have to wait till Thursday to tee it back up again, those are the five or six days that kill you a little bit because you can’t build any confident, you can’t build any momentum and you can’t find it on the range. I’m at that point where I need to be on the course competing.”
McIlroy was accepting of his fate on a day when his swing was out of sync and the putter cold: “I got off to a rough start, bogeying three and doubling four and did well to claw myself back into it and made four birdies. I just hit one out-of-bounds on 16, just two bad tee shots, one on four and one on 16 cost me four shots. So that wasn’t ideal but apart from that, the rest of the round was actually okay. I hit good putts but they just weren’t going in. So, just one of those days.”
Lowry’s round unraveled early on with a double bogey five on the third, where his tee shot spun back into the water, followed by a bogey on the fourth. Over and out. “I’m obviously very disappointed because I really, really want to do well here. I just have to pick myself up and move on and try to shoot as low a score as I can tomorrow,” he said.
In terms of emerging as chief pursuer, globe-trotting American Veerman - who gave up his medical studies to chase his dream of being a professional golfer - has moved into unchartered territory. His only tour win came in the 2016 Taifong Open on the Asian Development Tour.
“Growing up, the dream was always to play golf and when I got into an accident with the fireworks, I blew my thumb off. When they stitched it back together, that was a very life-changing moment and kind of puts things into a new perspective. I thought, ‘hey, if I became a doctor I could be really impactful to people’.
“So I started studying medicine. All the doctors who I was hanging out with, said, ‘everybody here wants to be on the golf course, what are you doing?’ I thought would I give professional golf a go, and here I am, still giving it a go,” explained Veerman of that career change that potentially could become a life-changing one with an Irish Open win.
Still, Herbert - whose only tour win came in last year’s Dubai Desert Classic - has destiny in his own hands: “The Irish Open is pretty cool and if you can win an event with Tommy Fleetwood and Rory in the field, I don’t think anyone’s going to try to knock that out of your possession any time soon. (It is) a massive chance, and you know, obviously I think in time to come I’ll probably look back on it and realise it more, but at the moment, I’m trying to stay pretty focused on the moment and really feel like I just play my game and let that sort of take care of itself.”
Collated scores after the Irish Open third round (Gbr & Irl unless stated, Par 72)
201 Lucas Herbert (Aus) 64 67 70
202 Johannes Veerman (USA) 65 70 67
204 Justin Harding (Rsa) 69 70 65
205 Francesco Laporta (Ita) 68 69 68, Dale Whitnell 67 67 71, Rikard Karlberg (Swe) 71 67 67
206 Andy Sullivan 67 66 73, Jason Scrivener (Aus) 67 69 70, Richie Ramsay 67 69 70, Andrew Johnston 67 70 69, Grant Forrest 66 67 73
207 Tommy Fleetwood 67 72 68, Aaron Rai 69 71 67, Richard Bland 69 66 72, Antoine Rozner (Fra) 68 68 71, Thomas Pieters (Bel) 70 69 68, Sean Crocker (USA) 67 70 70
208 Adrian Otaegui (Spa) 69 66 73, James Morrison 70 68 70, Steven Brown 68 69 71
209 Wil Besseling (Ned) 69 69 71, Christiaan Bezuidenhout (Rsa) 67 68 74, John Catlin (USA) 69 68 72, Min-Woo Lee (Aus) 68 68 73, Zander Lombard (Rsa) 69 71 69, Chris Paisley 68 71 70, Jeff Winther (Den) 70 68 71, Gaganjeet Bhullar (Ind) 71 68 70, Cormac Sharvin 73 67 69, Maverick Antcliff (Aus) 69 72 68
210 Martin Kaymer (Ger) 67 70 73, Takumi Kanaya (Jpn) 71 68 71, Kiradech Aphibarnrat (Tha) 68 72 70, Julien Guerrier (Fra) 68 68 74
211 Graeme McDowell 74 67 70, David Law 73 66 72, Darren Fichardt (Rsa) 73 68 70, Adria Arnaus (Spa) 67 69 75, Jordan Smith 69 69 73, Fabrizio Zanotti (Pry) 68 72 71, David Howell 71 67 73, Marc Warren 71 70 70, Jack Senior 72 68 71, Matthew Jordan 69 69 73, Darius van Driel (Ned) 72 68 71, Connor Syme 69 71 71, Aaron Cockerill (Can) 68 70 73
212 Rory McIlroy 72 67 73, Pablo Larrazabal (Spa) 69 72 71, Marcus Armitage 68 68 76, Benjamin Hebert (Fra) 70 69 73, Justin Walters (Rsa) 69 71 72, Maximilian Kieffer (Ger) 71 67 74, Gregory Havret (Fra) 67 69 76, Svn-Hwan Kim (USA) 72 68 72, Toby Tree 72 69 71
213 Shane Lowry 70 69 74, Nicolas Colsaerts (Bel) 67 73 73, Shubhankar Sharma (Ind) 74 67 72, David Coupland 73 68 72
214 Alexander Bjoerk (Swe) 72 66 76, Rasmus Hoejgaard (Den) 70 71 73, Vincent Norrman (Swe) 68 72 74, Oliver Farr 72 66 76
215 Garrick Porteous 70 70 75
216 Alexander Levy (Fra) 68 73 75
218 Scott Jamieson 68 73 77
223 Kurt Kitayama (USA) 69 72 82, Raphael Jacquelin (Fra) 70 70 83
