Relaxed McIlroy ready to tame the beast
advantage.” He added: “I’ve been working on a few things and feel like it’s good. I’m not putting myself under any pressure. I just have to get out there and not get in my own way.”
McIlroy, who missed the 2015 Open through injury, has finished in the top five in his last three appearances, winning the Claret Jug in 2014. He followed it up with the USPGA Championship a month later. The Major wins have dried up since but Padraig Harrington, the champion the last time the Open was staged at Carnoustie in 2007, feels McIlroy needs to be cut some slack.
“In 2011, he was competing against himself – similar to how Tiger Woods would have been for most of his career,” said Harrington.
“He is competing against many other guys now and it’s just a tougher ask. The beauty for Rory is he’s still very young, he’s still very capable, and with patience those Majors will come.
“There’s no doubt at four you want Rory to have more Majors, but even in Tiger’s best years he won 14 Majors over basically 14 years – that’s one a year. It doesn’t happen as often as people think.
“Rory is well on pace to get into double digits with Majors.”
Harrington feels Woods, at the age of 42, is capable of turning back time and winning at Carnoustie but says he cannot just repeat his successful ploy from a similarly tinder-dry Hoylake in 2006 when he famously hit only one driver all week.
“He’s good enough to win this championship, no doubt about it, but I don’t think he could play golf like the way he played at Hoylake,” he said.
“Trying to play in from 220 yards into every par-four would be tough around here. I don’t know if that’s the strategy this week to lay up from that far back.”
Woods will play with Scotland’s Russell Knox and Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama in the first two rounds. Justin Rose will be in the same group as defending champion Jordan Spieth.
Sandy Lyle, the 1985 champion who, at 60, is likely to be playing in his last Open, will hit the first ball on Thursday at 6.35am.