Rory must play more to regain his putting touch
RORY McILROY will need to play some spectacular golf in the next few months if 2016 is to be anything other than a write-off.
That is the only conclusion to draw after he missed the cut at the PGA Championship to conclude his Majors season in miserable fashion.
Rory has always measured himself by his performance in golf’s biggest four events. He was 10th at The Masters, without challenging, and it was the same at The Open despite tying for fifth.
But to miss the cut at the US Open and now again at Baltusrol is a huge disappointment.
Rory blamed his putting for his woes this week but that was only part of the problem. On Thursday, he hit a number of poor iron shots to put himself in bad positions.
And it didn’t help that he was paired with World No.1 Jason Day, who was looking very confident on the greens.
The biggest danger is that Rory is almost talking himself into becoming a bad putter and that is a real problem. He may never be like Jordan Spieth on the greens. But it’s been good enough to win him four Majors so far.
At the moment, McIlroy has certainly lost confidence with his short stick and that has spread to other parts of his game.
Suddenly, your chipping and bunker play is affected as you feel you always have to knock the ball dead to hole anything.
You also start to aim at flags rather than the middle of the green because you don’t trust yourself to make anything from more than 20 feet. Your whole strategy is affected.
That was the case at the par-5 18th on Friday. A par would have been enough but Rory thought he needed a birdie and took on a risky shot with his five-iron.
He missed the green, left himself with an impossible shot and ended with an ugly bogey-six and a weekend off.
Rory has had spells of bad putting before and recovered. We hope he can do the same again. Dave Stockton has helped him in the past and his tips have led Rory to win Majors by eight shots.
But it may be time for a drastic change in his approach to putting. That might be using the claw grip or putting left hand below right.
Rory has already experimented a bit with the latter and he’ll have to return to that method. It may not look the most natural but it’s about finding a way to get the ball in the hole.
If the putts start dropping, then the rest of his game will quickly fall back into place.
Personally, I would like to see Rory play more golf, though. He is still only 27 and a bit young to have this tunnel vision about focusing solely on the Majors.
He’s trying to copy Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods in their approach. But sometimes you need to play your way back into form.
Confidence is only gained or lost on the course – never on the practice ground. It will only truly come back for Rory when he starts to hole crucial putts in tournament play.