Boston Common Routs The Bay 9-1 as McIlroy Beats Lowry and the Jet Lag

Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry both spent Sunday at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic, nearly 8,000 miles from Palm Beach Gardens. Both were on the tee at SoFi Center on Monday night. Only one of them looked like it. McIlroy's Boston Common Golf hammered Lowry's The Bay Golf Club 9-1 on Jan. 26, 2026, scoring the final eight points of the night and moving to 2-0 for the first time in club history.

Asked afterward for his secret to beating the jet lag that Lowry could not, McIlroy smirked and pointed to the travel arrangements. "He doesn't have his own plane," he said, per Golf Digest. The two usually fly together, with Lowry riding along on McIlroy's jet. Not this time.

The scoreline was the most lopsided of the season so far, and it confirmed what the first month of Season 2 had been hinting at. The team that finished last in 2025 now looks like the team to beat in 2026.

A messy start for The Bay

Boston went with McIlroy, Keegan Bradley and alternate Michael Thorbjornsen, the same trio that beat Los Angeles in the club's first ever win. The Bay played Lowry, Wyndham Clark and Min Woo Lee, with Ludvig Åberg not in the lineup.

The Bay made a mess of the first hole. Lowry sent his drive right, shouting "Fore!" as it went, and Lee was left with a buried lie in the rough that ended up in the water for a penalty. Boston went up 1-0 without having to do anything special.

The Bay answered right away, cruising to a birdie at "Bonnie Link" to tie the match 1-1 through two holes. That was the last point The Bay would win all night.

Boston's Team Hole, "Storrowed," produced the most entertaining sequence of Triples. Boston threw the Hammer with the hole tilting its way. The Bay accepted, and Lowry made a nine-foot birdie putt to halve the hole and turn a potential two-point swing into nothing.

Boston takes over

The turn came at the par-3 fifth, "Cenote." Lee found the penalty area off the tee, The Bay conceded, and Boston led 2-1.

At the sixth, "Cut the Sails," a new drivable par 4, Boston threw the Hammer again. This time The Bay declined to putt for a tie, giving up one point rather than risking two. Boston led 3-1.

Then Thorbjornsen went back to work. The Massachusetts native, who set a TGL record with four made putts from outside 10 feet in his debut, rolled in a 14-foot birdie at the seventh for a 4-1 lead. He has now made more putts from outside 10 feet than anyone in the league, and he did it in a little more than one and a half matches.

Boston closed Triples on The Bay's own Team Hole, "Bay Breaker," the ninth. Clark missed a birdie putt from inside five feet, Boston converted, and the Ballfrogs became the first team in TGL to win a point on an opponent's Team Hole. Boston took a 5-1 lead into Singles.

McIlroy against his friend

The Singles rotation lined up McIlroy against Lowry, close friends and Ryder Cup partners, and McIlroy won both of their holes. He took the 10th to push the lead to 6-1, and he took the 13th as well. Somewhere in there he also found time for a 358-yard drive, a TGL record, which is not bad for a guy who had been in Dubai the day before.

In between, The Bay tried to change the momentum at the 11th. It threw the Hammer before the tee shots and then called a timeout as Thorbjornsen stood over a six-foot par putt to halve the hole. A miss would have made it 6-3 and put The Bay right back in the match. Thorbjornsen made it.

Clark joked that The Bay had just wanted to give Thorbjornsen a little more time to think about it. McIlroy fired back that after Clark's last hole, he would not be talking too much.

Boston added two more points down the stretch to finish it 9-1, an 8-0 run across the final 11 holes.

Lowry was candid about what it meant to lose to McIlroy, of all people. "You just hate losing, don't you? It's probably worse losing to one of your friends," he said, recalling being paired with McIlroy in the final round at Pebble Beach last year when McIlroy beat him there. "It's obviously a little different dynamic out here than it is on the PGA TOUR, but you're still out there wanting to win and we certainly didn't do that tonight."

Thorbjornsen and the new Boston

Bradley could not stop praising his alternate. "Michael (Thorbjornsen) has been so good in here around the greens," Bradley said. "He's an incredible player." He added, with a little regional pride, that it had been great getting to know a "nice New England kid," and closed with "Go Pats!"

The numbers back him up. Thorbjornsen has been in the middle of Boston's biggest moments in both wins, from the 15-foot eagle that beat Los Angeles to the 14-footer and the clutch six-footer under the Hammer against The Bay.

As a team, Boston has now outscored opponents 16-6 through two matches. It won the Hammer exchanges again, taking one point from The Bay's decline at the sixth while giving up nothing on The Bay's Hammer at the 11th. It also took a point from The Bay's Team Hole, a small but telling sign of how comfortable the Ballfrogs have become in the building after a winless first season.

The Bay, meanwhile, keeps beating itself. A missed drive and a ball in the water at the first, a tee shot in the penalty area at the fifth, a short birdie miss on its own Team Hole. Against a team playing this cleanly, that is too many gifts.

That is a strange place for The Bay to be. A year ago it was the steadiest team in the league, a 4-1 regular season club that won with clean, boring golf. Through two matches of Season 2 it has been on the wrong end of almost every momentum swing, first against Atlanta and now against Boston, and it has won just five holes total. The roster is the same caliber, with Lowry, Clark, Lee and Åberg all capable of carrying a night. But in a five-match season, 0-2 means the margin for error is basically gone, and the next loss could end the playoff conversation before February is out.

For Boston, the bigger picture is about identity. Last season the Ballfrogs were the team that could not find a win. This season they are the team that makes the other side play the extra shot, and they have a rookie alternate who keeps making the putts that decide it.

Standings and schedule

Boston is 2-0 and sits atop the standings on the holes-won tiebreaker over Atlanta Drive, also 2-0. Boston has won 15 holes this season. The Bay dropped to 0-2 with its second straight loss and faces a tough road to a top-four finish. Los Angeles and New York are 1-1, and Jupiter is 0-2.

The Bay is back Feb. 9 against Los Angeles Golf Club. Boston gets a long break before a Feb. 23 doubleheader that opens at 5 p.m. ET against Atlanta Drive. Next up on the calendar, Atlanta faces Jupiter Links on Feb. 2.

Boston's first win, 7-5 over Los Angeles, and The Bay's opener, a 7-4 loss to Atlanta, are recapped on Undrafted. The official match page is on tglgolf.com (opens in a new tab), and the PGA TOUR recap (opens in a new tab) has more.

Sources: TGL, PGA TOUR, Golf Digest, CBS12, Radio X, Links Nation. More TGL coverage on Undrafted.

A year ago Boston was the team everyone wanted to play. Now it is the team nobody wants to see.

Photo: TGL.