SECOND BEST
Rory falls short as Molinari clinches title
THEy like to think of Wentworth as the Augusta National of Europe, and for Rory McIlroy yesterday there were certainly painful echoes of what happened at the Masters last month as he came up short again in a finalround shootout.
This time, in the PGA Championship, it was Francesco Molinari playing the Patrick Reed role as he lived up to the old fable that ‘slow and steady wins the race’.
The consistent 35-year- old now heads for a triumphant homecoming at the Italian Open this week as the holder of Europe’s flagship title, back in the world’s top 20 and a third Ryder Cup appearance — in Paris in September — now firmly in his sights.
Molinari was in control for so long it was fairly startling to see him walk on to the parfive 18th green with the job still not done.
McIlroy, finding his game over the closing holes, struck two beautiful shots to 20ft while Molinari was 6ft short in four. Trailing by three strokes, McIlroy knew if he could roll in his eagle attempt, it would ask the question of Molinari, who would then have needed to hole to win.
McIlroy’s putt down the hill looked in all the way, but came up a ball’s width short. He dropped to his haunches as the frustrations of the day showed but, if truth be told, Molinari — who finished second last year — deserved to win. The pressure off, he holed his putt for par to complete a week in which the only bogeys he had were at the first hole on Thursday and the 10th on Friday, a remarkable achievement given the course’s stringent nature. He signed for a 68 to finish 17- under to McIlroy’s 70 (15 under).
‘I’m delighted to get over the line after so many close finishes in the past,’ Molinari said. ‘If I could have picked one more event to win in my career it would have been this one. I made it more interesting than it should have been at the end but thankfully I got the job done.’
Joint third went to Scandinavians Alex Noren and Lucas Bjerregaard, and the leading Englishmen were Matt Fitzpatrick and Ross Fisher, in joint eighth.
With a four- shot lead over the quartet tied for third at the start of play, it was always likely that two men boasting the qualities of Molinari and McIlroy would get the job done between them.
Would it be one of the leading exponents of hitting fairways and greens? Or the Northern Irishman who has a higher gear all his own when the mood takes him?
In Molinari’s favour was his clear love of the venue, while for McIIroy the question was whether he could regain the sublime rhythm he showed during the first two rounds, something that deserted him totally on Saturday.
We didn’t have to wait long for the answer, as McIlroy missed fairways left and right over the opening holes. His anger at the failure of his usually reliable long game was plain, but it says much for his under-rated short game that he kept escaping with pars.
Trouble was, Molinari was throwing in the odd birdie and when McIlroy slipped up with bogeys at the 9th and 10th, the Italian had a fourshot lead. Thereafter he delivered a masterclass in front-running before his slight wobble at the 18th.
McIlroy now heads for the Memorial event on the PGA Tour, hoping to build on his play over the closing holes. Nagging away, though, will be the thought this was the third shootout this year where he came off second best, following his loss to Haotong Li in Dubai in January and, of course, the Masters to Reed.
It has turned what would have been a stunning body of work for the first five months into an average one, his sole success the spectacular comeback triumph at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
‘I’m down because when you’re three shots ahead after 36 holes you want to close out a win,’ McIlroy said. ‘But I’m not far away from how I played at Bay Hill. The swing tweak I’m working on just needs a little more work.’
As for Molinari, in Ryder Cup terms his performance pre-empted the most famous song of the band Simple Minds, who played a set in the tented village afterwards: Don’t you forget about me.