“It would have been a hard place to be away from my family for four weeks, and you start to wonder why you do it and what it’s all for and stuff like that. But I got to the house on Sunday night and the lads were there to cheer me up.
“I put in a really long day here yesterday and I hit a lot of balls for me. I don’t normally do that, but I needed to get it out of my system. And I came out to the golf course today and I was in much better form.
“I felt a bit alright out there today and feel like I’m hitting the ball a little bit better. Yeah, it’s going to take a decent mental grind for me over the next few days to perform well this week because a lot’s going on.”
Lowry gets down himself when things go wrong and he admits he relies heavily on his support network.
“To be honest, I put myself down a little bit too much maybe at times,” he said. “But I’ve got a great team of people around me that are here. I had a great chat with Neil on Sunday night when I got in.
“Brian started to talk to me about it and I just said, ‘Brian, I don’t really want to talk about it now, to be honest’, because I didn’t know if I could talk about it. I was almost reduced to tears. It was that type of a day.
“But this game is a funny way of like paying you back at the times you least expect it. So who knows what will happen this week.”
A few well-chosen words from Rotella have turned despairing golfers into world beaters overnight and Lowry took full advantage after their post-Hall of Fame chat on Monday.
“If it wasn’t the US Open I don’t know if I would be here,” Lowry said. “I was fortunate Bob is here for Pádraig’s Hall of Fame—I do a bit of work with Bob— and I had a chat with him for half an hour last night after the ceremony, so that was nice, get a clear mind.
“Bob is great. He just told me I need to forgive myself and allow yourself to do that. The one thing you can’t do is dwell on it, and you just have to forget about it and move on and go back to what I do best and what I do best is playing the game the way I see it.”
Given the brutal test that awaits this week, the six inches between the ears will be key for Lowry, who was overheard on the range on Monday telling a colleague, “I forgot how f***ing hard this place is.”
“Yeah, it’s going to be one of the tougher US Opens and I am trying not to talk myself out of it too much,” he said. “There’s a lot of negative talk going around with the players. It’s going to be so hard. All you can do is try to stay in your own lane and try to do your best.
“You’re going to hit good shots and not get rewarded. So it’s going to be a pure mental battle but one that I think I’ll be ready for.
“I stood on the second green out there and I was thinking, ‘How did six over miss the cut the last time’, because that’s what I was. I missed the cut by a shot. It’s a very tough tough golf course.
“But someone will shoot five-under on Thursday. Someone always does. I would say the winning score will be close to par.
“So you know, it’s important that if you get off to a bad start, you keep going. Make a few pars, get yourself back on track and then see where it leaves you. It’s US open. It’s supposed to be tough. I just hope it’s fair.”
