The world No 14 scraped through the cut line with nothing to spare after enduring two disappointing days on the greens.
But after firing a 74 in Saturday’s high winds to go into the final round tied for 51st on one-over, he shot up the leaderboard with six birdies in his first 16 holes before making a double bogey at his penultimate hole.
The Offaly man was tied for 29th when a thunderstorm broke over Sawgrass and the claxon sounded with Rory McIlroy one stroke clear of overnight leader JJ Spaun with seven holes to play. When play resumed yesterday, Lowry birdied the last hole for a 67 and entered the clubhouse tied 21st on four-under. He started on the back nine due to the split-tee start and birdied the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, third and seventh before dropping two shots after a pulled tee shot at the eighth.
If Lowry was smiling heading to Innisbrook, Tom McKibbin was laughing all the way to the bank in Singapore after he took his earnings from his first four LIV Golf starts to a cool $2.58m (€2.36m).
The Holywood star (22) tied for 25th in LIV Singapore and his Legion XIII outfit finished second in the team event, which means he is now close to surpassing the €2.82m he’s won in 49 appearances on the DP World Tour.
After making $1.03m on his debut at LIV Golf Riyadh, where he tied for 15th and Legion XIII won the $3m team title, he was seventh in Adelaide ($470,500) and second again in the team event ($375,000).
He tied for sixth in Hong Kong to pick up another $561,875 before claiming $187,500 for his tied-25th finish in Singapore and another $375,000 for his share of the runner-up prize in the team contest.
The $3m top prize went to Sergio Garcia’s Fireballs, who claimed their third successive team win by three shots from Legion XIII.
Chile’s Joaquin Niemann shot a six-under 65 at Sentosa to win the individual title by five shots from Brooks Koepka on 17-under and win $4m while McKibbin finished on two-under after a 70 with Graeme McDowell ($50,000) 53rd in the 54-man field on 10-over after a 74.
It was a second win in three starts for Niemann (26) who moves to the top of the Individual Champion points standings and into position to earn an exemption for June’s US Open at Oakmont.
“Today was one of those days,” said Niemann, who won by three shots in Adelaide. “Everything went my way.”
The Fireballs won despite an ailing Garcia, who came down with bronchitis and had a temperature of 39.1C on the eve of the tournament.
He shot level par for the week but his three teammates, led by David Puig’s solo fourth at 10-under, stepped up to rally from an eight-shot deficit to start the final round.
“This week was a tough week because I’ve been sick all week and haven’t been able to help the team as much as I would have liked to,” Garcia said.
“To see the performance that my teammates put in to be able to get this win was pretty impressive.”
In Australia, Belgium’s Manon De Roey made a clutch birdie at the 18th hole to win the Australian Women’s Classic and her third LET title.
She shot a one-under 69 to pip England’s Cara Gainer by a shot on nine-under par at Coffs Harbour.
Lauren Walsh shot 74 to tie for 16th (€4,994) on two-under while rookie Anna Foster also shot 74 to tie for 53rd (€1,125) on four-over.
Meanwhile, England’s Joshua Berry came through a four-man play-off to claim a maiden HotelPlanner Tour title in the Kolkata Challenge at Royal Calcutta.
Berry signed for a one-over 73 to tie with Norwegian Andreas Halvorsen, Austrian Lukas Nemecz and Om Prakash Chouhan from India on 11-under before birdieing the second extra play-off hole to win.
Laytown and Bettystown’s Alex Maguire shot 71 to tie for 46th on level par.
