Shane Lowry found water on the 18th hole as he missed out on the Dubai Invitational title to Nacho Elvira in a dramatic final round.<\/p>\n
Lowry held a one-shot lead heading to the final hole, but a wayward bunker shot flew past the flag and rolled into the lake on the far side of the green.<\/p>\n
A hole behind, overnight leader Elvira made a birdie putt on the 17th to join Lowry on 10 under while the Irishman toiled.<\/p>\n
While Lowry had to settle for a double bogey on the final hole and dropped back to eight under, Spain’s Elvira secured the par he needed to win the third title of his career.<\/p>\n
Rory McIlroy was one of five players involved in a tie for the lead midway down the back nine, along with Elvira, Lowry, England’s Marcus Armitage and New Zealand’s Daniel Hillier, but the challengers fell away one by one.<\/p>\n
A hole ahead of his Ryder Cup team-mate, McIlroy required a birdie to tie for the lead but, foreshadowing Lowry’s fate, he overhit from the same bunker and his chance slipped away.<\/p>\n
Masters champion McIlroy was left to rue a slow start but soon put himself in contention with five birdies in a row.<\/p>\n
That left him with a chance of victory, but a wayward tee shot on the 18th left him in deep rough and he could only find the bunker with his recovery, and that ended his hopes.<\/p>\n
“I was just trying to get the most out of what I had. I didn’t have the greatest of starts and I wasn’t really focused on winning, I was just trying to piece it together with good swings,” McIlroy told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
“It was still a good first week back and I learned a lot about my game. I wasn’t very sharp, but hopefully I’m a bit sharper now going into next week.”<\/p>\n
The demise of McIlroy left a shootout between Lowry, who had moved into the solo lead on 10 under with a birdie on the 13th, and Elvira, who had led but fell back into the pack after back-to-back bogeys on the eighth and ninth. <\/p>\n
However, a superb recovery from Elvira on the 10th, when he made par despite taking a drop for finding water, sparked his comeback and he held his nerve to win. <\/p>\n
“It means the world. If you had told me on Tuesday that I was going to be winning this I would never have believed you,” the 38-year-old told Sky Sports. <\/p>\n
“It’s a dream come true, especially having my family here. Whatever happens now will not come close to this.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shane Lowry found water on the 18th hole as he missed out on the Dubai Invitational title to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-377158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}