“I played poorly today and obviously had a bad finish. I felt like I ground it out really well to get to one-under for the day through 13. Then a bad shot on 14 and a little bit of a bad break as well.” Lowry hasn’t had much luck this week on his return to the course where he claimed the Claret Jug in 2019. He was hit with a controversial two-shot penalty after his round on Friday after the R&A decided he had unintentionally moved his ball with a practise swing. That left him even-par at the halfway stage but his night was only going to get worse. “Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to take. You get home late and have to dust yourself off. Wake up at 2:30 with cramps in my stomach. I know we have it in the house.” One daughter, Ivy, had it a couple of days ago, his wife Wendy was under the weather on Friday and his other daughter Iris was dealing with it at the same time as he dad. At one point, on the 9th, he was sitting on the fairway for ten minutes. Lowry explained that he tried to throw up at every bathroom he visited over the 18 holes but couldn’t. A lack of energy cost him towards the end with bogeys on 14 and 17. Had it not been a major, he wouldn’t have lasted. “Yeah, I'm not not playing. I'm definitely playing.” All told, then, not the week he envisaged when he stood on the first tee on Thursday with no little hope and expectation invested in him as The Open returned to the scene of his greatest triumph and the island of Ireland. “Yeah, I felt like I dealt with it well, though, and felt like I did really well. You could say I scored pretty badly. Par-fives were poor over the first couple of days, and I feel like I really could have been there, thereabouts. You know, it's golf. It doesn't always go your way. “You just need to keep plugging away and I'll go out there tomorrow… The annoying thing for me today is I didn't get to enjoy today as much as I would have liked. Saturday at The Open in your home country, I should enjoy it a lot more than I did, just because of how I felt. “Hopefully I get out tomorrow morning and try and enjoy it as best I can, try to shoot the best score I can, and then have a couple weeks off before the playoffs. For me, my big mindset for the next few months is about the Ryder Cup and trying to win that. “That's where all my work is going to go towards over the next while.”