The “Bear Trap” caught Shane Lowry and gave Nico Echavarria the Cognizant Classic win.
Lowry, the popular, affable 38-year-old Irishman, had a three-shot lead at the PGA Tour event on Sunday when he entered the four-hole closing stretch at PGA National, named after Jack Nicklaus (who redesigned the course in 1990). Lowry played the 15th hole safely, then got to No. 16 and unraveled.
He took iron off the tee, an exceedingly cautious play, and it cost him — his ball pushed into the water, 25 yards from the edge of the fairway. Lowry had to take a drop back where the ball originally crossed out of bounds, which looked closer to the forward tee box than the fairway. He played his third shot with 183 yards still to go, facing the wind, and found the back of the greenside bunker.
“I played unbelievable all day, and one bad shot on 16 completely threw me for the last three holes,” Lowry said after the tournament. “It’s never happened to me before.”
It was a tricky shot with the back pin position, but Lowry, one of the best short-game players in the world, stepped right up and confidently hit the shot he had to save double bogey.
Still, it was his first bogey or worse in 35 holes, and with Lowry watching from the par-3 17th tee box, Echavarria rammed in a birdie putt to tie him atop the leaderboard. Lowry seemed relaxed and was seen by NBC’s cameras laughing with playing partner Austin Smotherman, but he hit his tee shot on No. 17 so far right that it was nearly over the water entirely.
Lowry is a major champion, having won the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush, and is just months removed from clinching the Ryder Cup for the Europeans with a birdie putt in front of tens of thousands at Bethpage Black. But he’s also now 1-for-6 converting 54-hole PGA Tour leads into wins, and has not won a solo tournament on North American soil since the 2015 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.
It was the first time in his PGA Tour career that he had made back-to-back double bogeys.
Shane Lowry’s poor iron play late cost him the win on Sunday. (Raj Mehta / Getty Images)
“I’m obviously extremely disappointed,” Lowry said. “I had the tournament in my hands, and I threw it away. What more can I say? That’s twice this year now so far. I’m getting good at it.”
Echavarria led at 16-under as a crowded leaderboard made the turn, but lost the lead to Lowry when the latter eagled the 10th hole. Lowry birdied No. 12 and 13 to make it a three-shot lead, and it felt like his week, but Echavarria kept the pace and took advantage of his opportunity. He finished at 17-under-par, two strokes ahead of Lowry, Taylor Moore and Smotherman.
“It was a blessing today. I didn’t have my best off the tee, but I was able to manage,” Echavarria told the broadcast. “I had some good breaks. To win out here, sometimes you have to have good breaks if you’re not Scottie Scheffler, that hits it every time in the perfect place. I’m happy with how it went.”
Echavarria had a story of his own to share — the 31-year-old Colombian has won twice before on the PGA Tour, but will now be going back to the Masters. He and his wife, Claudia, recently decided to move to this part of South Florida, and she closed on their house during his second round on Friday.
That was his worst round of the week, a 1-over 72, perhaps owing to that distraction. But Echavarria began the week with a round of 63, and went 66-66 on the weekend.
He said NBC informed him after he walked off the 16th green of the potential swing. “I looked back, saw Shane’s caddie running down to get the yardage. Probably knew he was going to make double at best,” Echavarria said. He knew playing the par-5 18th that Lowry had again gone into the water on No. 17, and played the final hole for par.
The Cognizant Classic, formerly the Honda, was once a higher-profile tournament on the PGA Tour schedule, thanks in part to its location (a majority of PGA Tour players live and train in South Florida). But with the reshuffle in past years — including the Players Championship moving to March — it’s been lost, stationed at the start of the Florida swing, after the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Genesis Invitational, but before the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Players.
That led to a reduced-strength field this year, with eight of the Official World Golf Ranking’s top 50 playing in Palm Beach.
“The hardest thing about today is I’ve never won in front of my four-year-old, and she was there waiting for me,” Lowry said. “I only wanted it for her today. … I wanted it so bad. Just to see her little ginger hair running down the 18th green would have been the most special thing in the world.
“I thought I had it. I thought I was going to win.”