Shane Lowry: I’ve made one key change ahead of the US Open, and playing with Tiger Woods doesn’t worry me

I’ve never played Winged Foot so I’ve been practicing since Monday to get myself in the right frame of mind.

US Opens are always hard set-ups and I love a very tough test of golf. I like playing traditional US Open venues, which this is, so it’ll be good to test myself against the best in the world once again. I’ll be giving it a go.

It’s a little bit different this year, given that it’s outside its normal slot. I’m obviously trying to peak and spent last week trying to get my game right.

I’ll just try my hardest and give it my best and see where it leads me.

Winged Foot should be a similar kind of test to last season’s Open Championship. Having won that, I know I can beat the best in the world on my day, so I’m excited to get back to teeing it up in the second Major of this truncated season.

NEW DRIVER

I’ll probably have a new driver in the bag. The driver I’ve been using the last couple of years, I think it’s probably gone a little bit dead.

I practised with it last week and hopefully it goes all right. I need to get back to driving it well because you need to drive the ball very well the way a US open course is set up.

Funnily enough, I was listening to Dustin Johnson the other week. He’s been on fire all through the Fed-Ex Cup but hit a dip a little before that. He reckons he was just standing a little too close to the ball when he was driving and it was impacting the rest of his game.

Golf is a game of such fine margins.

One small tweak and it can recover your game from what you thought was miles away. It’s a funny thing. Small margins make all the difference and all the lads on Tour are always looking for something that can trigger your best form.

You’re only one week away from greatness in this game and that’s what keeps us all going because you know you can be very close to doing something special.

I was second to DJ in the US Open four years ago and that experience helped shaped my game since then. I’ll be pulling on those memories and of my Open Championship win last year this week.

TEEING IT UP WITH TIGER

I know at some stage I’ll get to play competitive golf with Tiger Woods, but the last thing on my mind is who I’m getting paired with in the first round of the big tournament.

I’m just going to worry about myself and try and do all that, so pretty much one of the last things on my mind is the pairings.

You’re paired with who you are paired with, and you just have to get on with it and play enough and see how you do.

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