The body language from Shane Lowry on the ninth green, his finishing hole, told its own story. He removed his Srixon cap from his head and held it in his left hand, his right then furiously rubbing his scalp in relief. One of his toughest rounds of a golfing career that finished with a birdie. And that, at least, provided salvation in enabling him to survive the midway cut at this 108th US PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club.Up to that point, Lowry hadn’t managed a single birdie on a difficult, windy day that had pin placements on greens that would have tested the patience of a saint.“I felt like every pin was on the bonnet of a car,” claimed Lowry, who shot a 76 for a total of four-over-par 144 that managed to get him into the weekend playing catch-up, but at least with another 36 holes to rescue his championship.For most of the round, though, Lowry was on the wrong side of the course set-up’s severity, especially in and around the greens where a three-putt bogey on the 10th, his opening hole, set the tone for the five hours plus that followed.On their closing hole, indeed, the handshake between Lowry and Collin Morikawa (72 for 141), and the hug to the departing Viktor Hovland (72 for 146), was akin to three men who had been put through the mill together, survival the name of the game.Lowry had more travails than any one of them, admittedly, his plight emphasised for all to see on the par-3 17th, his eighth hole, where a poor swing meant he hit his tee shot into the water and ultimately ran up a double-bogey five.Shane Lowry lines up a putt on the 10th green during the second round of the PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club on Friday in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Getty Images The tee shot wasn’t pretty by any means, more akin to the fun pre-Masters play of the par-3 16th at Augusta National, where players attempt to skip the ball across the surface to the green. Lowry’s hand came off the club as soon as his iron connected with a ball that almost defied the laws of physics in skipping on the water’s surface before disappearing below.Lowry’s round featured that double-bogey five along with five bogeys, of which two of them – on the seventh and eighth – meant he stood on the ninth tee box at seven over on his round and at five over for the championship. Finally, and timely, a birdie – his only one – came on the par-5 into the wind, where he pitched his approach to five feet, waited for Jason Dufner to finish out on the nearby 18th, and rolled in the putt for the birdie that moved him on to the weekend.“Some of the pin positions are just, like honestly [so difficult]. I feel like we’re pretty good at looking at a course and finding out where the pins are going to be and if my coach threw down the plate on a few of those I would have laughed at him. I know a couple of guys are shooting good scores or whatever, but I’ve never had so many 15-footers that I felt like I could putt off the green,” said Lowry.Lowry predicted: “Everyone will say, ‘oh yeah of course you’re going to moan because you shot 76′, but it’s very hard. People sitting in the grandstands have no idea how difficult it is out there.“Like, this is a great golf course. There’s no point in trying to trick it up. There’s pins out there that we see at Augusta National, right, but the thing is, like the pin on five at Augusta, when it’s on the left, that’s like borderline, but the thing is they put the pin in the bowl on the sixth. There wasn’t one pin in a bowl out there today; it felt like every pin was on the bonnet of a car.”