The Olympics are over and Shane Lowry wants to make a big push for his best chance in the FedEx Cup

SAINT QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France (AP) — Shane Lowry was among 21 players at the Paris Olympics who headed across the Atlantic Ocean for the PGA Tour’s final tournament of the regular season that determines the top 70 who advance to the FedEx Cup postseason.

What makes the Irishman stand out is being No. 10 in the FedEx Cup.

That makes him a lock for the top 50 who advance to the all-important BMW Championship (guaranteed starts in all the signature events), and for the top 30 who advance to the Tour Championship.

“The Comcast Top 10,” Lowry said with a smile, referring to the $40 million in bonus money doled out to the top 10 in the regular season.

It’s not just about the money. It’s about opportunity.

Lowry, the 2019 British Open champion, is having one of his most consistent years. He has six top-10 finishes, two of them in majors, one of them a team victory with Rory McIlroy in the Zurich Classic.

“I think this is probably going to be one of the best chances I’ll ever have to actually win the FedEx Cup, so every point might count at the end of the day,” Lowry said. “Not only for Comcast. If I can make 100 FedEx Cup points next week, or more, it’s certainly going to help me along the way.”

It’s a big push at the end of the year with what is likely to be five straight tournaments through the Tour Championship.

Lowry says he doesn’t like chasing status, and if he had not tied for sixth at Royal Troon, he might be off this week. But he also likes knowing exactly what’s on his plate, especially with getting settled back in South Florida as 7-year-old daughter Iris prepares for school.

He has a clear idea of what he wants to do the next three weeks.

“If I can be in the top 10 going into Atlanta, I think I can give it a run,” Lowry said. “Obviously, giving Scottie Scheffler a head start, and Xander (Schauffele), is not going to be easy.”

Lowry has never made it to East Lake for the season finale in Atlanta. He was just outside the top 30 in 2019 and 2022.

Lydia Ko is the only player to win golf medals in two Olympics, a silver in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and a bronze after losing a playoff in the Tokyo Games.

She just hasn't seen them since she won them.

“I'm pretty sure the Tokyo medal is somewhere in my sister's apartment,” Ko said. “And the Rio silver is in my dad's closer. So they are in very treasured places — just not with me.”

And the New Zealand star is OK with that, especially the bronze.

Her sister was with her for the Tokyo Games. Their grandmother died the day Ko was leaving for Japan.

“I asked my sister, who was going to Korea from Japan, to take it back and show it to my parents and also hopefully take it to grandma’s grave. That was kind of the meaning on why it went to her place,” she said.

“My dad normally likes to keep stuff,” she said. “So I find a lot of cool things in there when I'm home, from whiskey bottles to memorabilia. That’s why he kept the Rio one.”

And what happens if she wins the gold this week?

“I’m definitely taking all of them back and I’m going to find a way to kind of present all three,” she said.

Aditi Ashok of India is the only player at the Olympics who played the Portland Classic last week on the LPGA Tour, a mere 5,000 miles (8,046 kilometers) away.

She was No. 76 in the Race to CME Globe, and only the top 60 qualify for the season-ending Tour Championship. Ashok shot 72 and tied for 22nd, moving up two spots in the standings.

And then it was off to Paris, which was no picnic.

She signed her card, packed her car and headed to the Portland, Oregon, airport for a direct overnight flight to Heathrow in London. Ashok purposely collected her bags in London and had a long layover to avoid her luggage getting lost. She re-checked them to Paris and arrived Monday evening.

One problem. By then, the accreditation at the Paris airport was closed. So she had to get to the Olympic Village to register before finally getting to her room.

Tuesday was the final day of practice before the women's competition begins. Ashok is among 14 women playing her third Olympics. She missed out on a chance for the bronze medal by one shot at the Tokyo Games.

Dottie Pepper is the latest player to be honored by the Friends of Golf with the Eddie Merrins Trophy. A 17-time winner, Solheim Cup star and for two decades a popular voice on golf television, Pepper will receive the award at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles at the annual charity event on Oct. 7.

Merrins, the longtime UCLA coach and pro at Bel-Air who died last year, helped launch Friends of Golf more than 40 years ago. It has donated more than $10 million to college and high school golf organizations.

“Eddie Merrins left his fingerprints all over our game, inspiring players and teachers to leave the game better than they found it,” Pepper said. “To be presented with this award in his name will be a constant reminder of how we can use golf’s value to make our entire world a better place.”

Hannah Darling of Scotland is the only returning Curtis Cup player for Great Britain and Ireland for the matches later this month at Sunningdale. The most important addition might be Catriona Matthew as captain. She was European captain of the Solheim Cup that beat the Americans in 2019 and 2021.

The United States last lost in 2016 in Ireland.

The GB&I team features the No. 1 amateur in women’s golf, Lottie Woad, who won the Augusta National Women’s Amateur in April. It also features the first sisters, Euphemie and Patience Rhodes of England, since Leona and Lisa Maguire in 2010.

The matches start Aug. 30.

The four golfers from Spain in the Paris Games all have something in common, and it didn’t take Azahara Munoz long to figure it out. Munoz and Carlota Ciganda, Jon Rahm and David Puig all went to Arizona State. ... Minjee Lee and Brooke Henderson are among 14 women who are competing in the Olympics for the third time. Only four men have played all three Olympics since 2016. ... The International Golf Federation's social media team asked players to write down their goal for the week. Most players mentioned bringing home a medal. Scottie Scheffler wrote, “Have fun.” ... The Olympic women's field comes from 33 countries, the fewest in the three Olympics dating to 2016. That includes Shannon Tan, the first golfer from Singapore to compete in the Summer Games.

Scottie Scheffler has won 14 times dating to his victory in the 2022 Phoenix Open. During that stretch he has won 23% of the time and has finished in the top 10 at a rate of 72%.

“I definitely think it’s better to have won something than nothing at all.” — Hideki Matsuyama after winning the bronze in Olympic men's golf.

AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

Hideki Matsuyama, of Japan, pose with his bronze medal following the medal ceremony for the men's golf at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, at Le Golf National in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France. Scottie Scheffler, of the United States, won the gold medal with Tommy Fleetwood, of Britain, silver. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Gold medalist Scottie Scheffler, of the United States, poses with his medal following the medal ceremony for men's golf during the medal ceremony at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, at Le Golf National in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France. Scottie Scheffler, of the United States, won the gold medal with Tommy Fleetwood, of Britain, silver and Hideki Matsuyama, of Japan, the bronze.(AP Photo/Matt York)

Jon Rahm, of Spain, reacts after a bogey on the 11th green during the final round of the men's golf at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, at Le Golf National in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Lydia Ko, of New Zealand, hits from the third tee during a practice round for the women's golf event at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024, at Le Golf National in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Shane Lowry, of Ireland, hits from the seventh tee during a practice round for the men's golf event at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, at Le Golf National in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Shane Lowry, of Ireland, hits his tee shot on the 1st hole during the second round of the men's golf event at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, at Le Golf National in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France. (AP Photo/Matt York)

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The head of the U.S. Postal Service expressed frustration Thursday with ongoing criticism by election officials of how it handles mail ballots while also seeking to reassure voters that it's ready to handle an expected crush of those ballots this fall.

U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told reporters that it's difficult for the Postal Service to address “generalities” about perceived problems and said some election officials don’t fully understand its efforts to deliver ballots in time to be counted.

He said the service will collect and deliver mail ballots more frequently in the days before the Nov. 5 presidential election and would keep processing centers open the Sunday before Election Day. The Postal Service, he said, would take extraordinary measures to “rescue” ballots that are mailed late and at risk of missing state deadlines to be received by election offices.

Elections officials have said for weeks that they are concerned about the Postal Service's readiness. They've cited ballots arriving late or without the postmarks required by some state laws during the primary season.

"We engage in heroic efforts intended to beat the clock,” DeJoy told reporters during a virtual news conference.

"These efforts are designed to be used only when the risk of deviating from our standard processes is necessary to compensate for the ballot being mailed so close to a state’s deadline,” he added. “This is commonly misunderstood in the media and even by election officials.”

DeJoy and state and local election officials do agree on one thing: They are urging voters who want to use mail ballots to return them as early as possible and at least seven days before a state's deadline. DeJoy also encouraged voters to go to post office counters to get their ballots postmarked.

“I want to see high turnout and low drama,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat and the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said Thursday.

In 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, election officials reported sending just over 69 million ballots in the mail, a substantial increase from four years earlier.

While the numbers this year may be smaller, many voters have embraced mail voting and come to rely on it.

NASS and the National Association of State Election Directors told DeJoy in a letter last week that the Postal Service had not fixed persistent problems that could disenfranchise some voters.

“It's extremely troubling that the USPS dismissed our concerns about disenfranchising voters by failing to postmark and timely deliver ballots, rather than working with us to find solutions,” Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican and the past NASS president, said this week.

On Thursday, DeJoy cited a report from the Postal Service’s inspector general at the end of July saying about 98.2% of the 10.3 million ballots mailed to election officials from Dec. 1, 2023, through April 1, 2024, arrived on time. The Postal Service's standard for on-time delivery of first-class mail is three to five days, and DeJoy has said the average is 2.7 days.

Schwab has said about 1,000 mail ballots from the state's Aug. 6 primary election couldn't be counted because they arrived too late or were not postmarked.

In Lawrence, in northeastern Kansas, Jamie Miller discovered that her primary election ballot took more than three weeks to go from the mailbox outside her home to her local election office, only 3.4 miles away.

She filled it out and left it for her mail carrier on July 20, the morning after she received it. The ballot envelope was postmarked July 22 but didn't get to election officials until Aug. 12, three days after the deadline for counting it.

Miller, a 53-year-old disabled Army veteran, plans to vote in person in November.

“I’m not going to give another person the opportunity to silence my voice again,” she said. “And it definitely should not be silenced by my federal government.”

DeJoy told reporters that if postal workers see a “stray” ballot, “they jump on it," but the service's monitoring systems might miss it if it's handled outside normal processing.

He also noted the difficulty of keeping pace with vastly different state election laws, regarding everything from postmark requirements to deadlines for returning mailed ballots.

“To operate successfully and even legally, we must have consistent policies nationwide,” DeJoy said Thursday. “But there are 8,000 election jurisdictions and 50 states who are far from uniform in their election laws and practices.”

In Kansas' most populous county, Johnson County, in the Kansas City area, Election Commissioner Fred Sherman said it's probably unrealistic to expect that no ballots will arrive late or without postmarks.

But he added: “If it’s your ballot, it’s not acceptable.”

Associated Press writer Steve Karnowski in St. Paul, Minnesota, contributed to this report.

FILE - U.S. Postal Service trucks park outside a post office in Wheeling, Ill., Monday, Jan. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)

FILE - Postmaster General and CEO Louis DeJoy speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, March 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)