Reckless Rory finds the going gets rough
BUT A LATE BIRDIE BLITZ SAVES McILROY’S PRIDE
JOSEPH H. BURBECK never got the credit he was due for Bethpage Black. Burbeck was a state park superintendent with a degree in landscape architecture and a background designing unexceptional public golf courses in the Midwest.
Bethpage Black is one of the greatest, most exacting championship courses in the world.
so Burbeck couldn’t have been the architect, obviously. until recently, the credit has always gone to A.W. Tillinghast, one of America’s greatest course designers — Winged Foot is his, and Baltusrol — and a consultant on the Bethpage project.
Now we know Tillinghast’s influence was minimal and Burbeck was the genius behind the Black course. While it was being built, he resided in a house near where the 14th green now stands. From there yesterday, a view would have been afforded of the holes he painstakingly mapped out, destroying the scorecard of one of the greatest golfers on the planet.
Double bogey, bogey, double bogey. The first three entries by rory McIlroy stand as the worst opening to a round in his Major championship career. he spent the rest of the day trying to recover and it is to his eternal credit that, by the end, he had.
A quite sensational run of birdies on his back nine looked to have kept him safe from the cut. Yet Bethpage Black had already done its worst. The havoc wreaked on McIlroy’s numbers between holes 10 and 12 — the size of the field here means players start from both the first and 10th tees — meant there was no hope of contention this weekend. Involvement was as good as it was going to get.
only McIlroy’s dismal front nine — at one stage he shared the same overall score, seven over, with John Daly who was traversing the course on a buggy due to arthritic knees — made his final score seem palatable.
In reality, needing to make a mighty charge to recover ground on early leader Brooks koepka, he shot one over for the day and only started playing when all hope seemed lost.
This is a wonderful growl of a course, brutal on wayward drives, demanding precision in approach, h and endless patience. None of these are McIlroy’s forte — well, certainly not at first yesterday.
he hit 35 per cent of fairways and, having erred, tried too hard to make amends. his very first tee shot found him standing in tall fescue grass to the right. Where a pragmatic mind would have been happy simply to return to the fairway, McIlroy instead tried to blast his way towards the green meaning that, soon after, he was standing in tall fescue grass to the left — and on it went.
Mitigation? As McIlroy said, teeing off at the 10th brings its own challenge. It’s a two-mile buggy ride, through crowds, so a player comes from the range and is then 25 minutes from hitting his next shot. ‘You almost feel you have to warm up again,’ McIlroy observed.
Then again, it’s the same for everybody. Those who teed off
ffrom theth fifirstt yesterday,td startedttd at t the 10th on Thursday, and vice versa. It’s not just the journey that makes the Black course’s back nine such a challenge. It’s Burbeck’s fiendish design.
The sign approaching the first tee, is famous. Being a state park, anyone can play for a fee, so a warning to the over-ambitious is considered necessary. ‘The black course is an extremely difficult course which we recommend only for highly skilled golfers,’ it reads. It might add that highly skilled golfers are not immune to its terrors, either.
certainly, as McIlroy, Jason Day and phil Mickelson hacked their way out of hollows and wild fescue it became obvious why 24-handicappers need to be deterred. It’s not fun playing the Black course badly. Those first three holes looked painful for McIlroy.
Mickelson, too. on the 11th, he got it wrong off the tee, ending up in some wildild roughh again.i MiMickelson k l took a club, moved to his ball, thought better of it. returned to his bag, took another, changed his mind again. This happened five times. At one stage he was holding a hybrid. he might as well have had a go at it with a rusty drainpipe.
This is a course that opened in 1936 and here it was, still bamboozling some of golf’s finest minds.
It certainly messed with McIlroy. having sent the first three tee shots of the round right, he then failed to execute even the simplest of tasks. on the 12th, already three over for the day, he played out of the rough again, but to the heart of the fairway with a straightforward chip to the green. he sent it screaming through into more rough. chipped back and didn’t quite get out. Another double bogey was recorded.
Now five over par for the day after three holes, McIlroy re-evaluated his ambitions for the tournament. ‘pride was my incentive,’ he said. ‘Just try to play a good round and get the best out of myself. I’m not used to missing cuts.’
In that respect, what followed was limited success. McIlroy birdied the next and — a bogey on 15 aside, that found him bobbing up and down for a view from a bunker like one of those arcade Whack-aMoles — then went on a run of pars that grounded his game.
The front nine is undoubtedly easier than the back nine here, so there were opportunities ahead. McIlroy was still seven over with six holes remaining, however, so it was going to take something very special
Like four birdies in five holes, perhaps? McIlroy’s revival began inauspiciously. The fourth, a par five, is by popular consent the most approachable hole on the course but McIlroy applied his own handicap by sticking his tee shot in a dip filled with rough. he still recovered for birdie, though, and then putts began dropping and honour was restored.
his drives were straighter, too, and it’s notable what a difference that makes around here. holes in which McIlroy found the fairway: birdie, par, birdie, birdie, par. holes in which he didn’t: double bogey, bogey, double bogey, bogey, par, par, par, birdie, par. The putting was crucial, too. McIlroy sank double the yardage in putts second round to first – yet it only served to underline the futility of such an impressive charge to so little end.
It was only last month that McIlroy went into the Masters as favourite. since then, we have seen the return of Tiger Woods as a Major winner, a course record set by koepka, the charges from Jordan spieth and Dustin Johnson yesterday. McIlroy, meanwhile, is playing for pride and a chance to keep his private plane on the runway two more days. If he’s happy with that, he shouldn’t be.