McILROY’S TOP BOMBING!
Rory to keep unleashing driver even if he’s missing the target
HE said he will take his driver on another bomb run today, but maybe it would be a sensible idea if Rory Mcilroy took it to a cobwebbed corner of the garage instead.
He won’t, of course. He’s not that sort — too adventurous, too thrillingly bold, too committed to his plan. and which golf fan doesn’t love him for it? But after the challenges he made for himself yesterday, you would understand if there was at least some temptation for an easier life.
Pulls, hooks — call them what you want, the Northern irishman went through the whole repertoire of misplaced tee shots in his first round. Repeatedly he found himself wading through the rough stuff down the left of the fairways, waist deep at times, far beyond the ropes at others.
There were 15 fairways to hit here and he found only four of them, or the 141st best in the field, if you want the most glaring metric of his struggle.
as he so neatly put it: ‘Yeah, i didn’t see the fairway much.’ But the wonder is that his recovery play was so consistently jaw- dropping that such an uncharacteristic display of loose driving didn’t matter. it was a stunning escape act performed in unusual scenarios and places across five hours.
One shot in particular was remarkable, with Mcilroy up to his bellybutton in yellow grass at the par-four 11th and 80 yards from the pin as he addressed his second stroke.
He should have been looking at a bogey and instead found himself putting from three feet for birdie. stunning. Except he then missed the putt and with it that hole told the tale of his round — to go with wayward tee shots and brilliant recoveries were his old problems with the putter. indeed, his impressive score of two under par would have been better had he done a more efficient job of getting the ball down.
Three chances from inside six feet were missed, a couple more short-ish ones stayed above ground — if putting truly is the measure of a champion golfer, then he must find a cure in the next three rounds.
it will be a big ask to correct a weakness that has become so engrained in his game and it was no surprise to hear the respected coach and analyst Butch Harmon speak critically of Mcilroy’s putting in the build-up to the Open.
Part of his argument was that Mcilroy had become ‘robotic’ and too burdened by the
mechanics of his stroke rather than trusting his instincts. That was put to McIlroy last night and it was angrily dismissed. Overall, though, McIlroy appeared satisfied with his round.
He had given himself a game plan of attacking at every given chance by driving without great fear of the consequences and to that end he was good to his word in the first round.
Irrespective of the questionable outcomes, he kept going with the biggest club in the bag. His rationale was that the rough isn’t as penal as normal because of the dry weather, meaning the rewards would justify the risk, and ultimately he was proved right, even if it did require those sublime recovery shots.
Surely nobody else in the field would have successfully extricated themselves so often from the rough or sand he found at one, three, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 14, 15 and 16. But escape he did, with a long birdie putt at three and further strokes gained at 12 and 14, with the only blip coming at the fifth, when he missed a short one.
‘Even if you play aggressive around here, you might make more bogeys, but you’re going to make more birdies as well,’ he said. ‘That’s my game plan this week.
‘I definitely think that’s the worst I’m going to drive it this week. They weren’t going where I wanted them to go but I was still wheeling away at it, which was a good sign.’
He did it all with Nasty written on the soles of his Nike shoes — a play on the Car-nasty tag given to this course. It hasn’t lived up to that yet. And McIlroy hasn’t lived up to his talent in a while, either, with almost four years passing since his last major.
A fair bit needs to come together in his game if that is going to change this weekend. But on the basis of his first round, he might just be the most entertaining to watch, come what may.