Three’s a major crowd
So McIlroy goes home
SPRINGFIELD, N.J. — For Phil Mickelson, Jason Day and Rory McIlroy yesterday’s second round of the PGA Championship went the way their seasons have been going. Phil scrambled to survive, Day was brilliant for long stretches and McIlroy couldn’t make a putt to save his weekend.
That’s why this morning, McIlroy is gone, Mickelson has an early tee time and Day trails co-leaders Jimmy Walker and Robert Streb by 2 after a 5-under-par 65. Day responded to a double bogey on the seventh hole at Baltusrol with seven blistering birdies in the next eight holes to make his defense of the PGA title he won a year ago an assertive one, even though he’d said the day before the tournament began he didn’t feel like he was defending anything, he was just trying to win.
So were McIlory and Mickelson, but not for long. Phil had a typical Phil-like day, meaning he traversed the topography at Baltusrol in all directions as well as on to a road outside the club that he visited with his opening drive.
He then hit his provisional by a cart path and his fourth shot landed just on the fringe . . . of a neighbor’s backyard on an adjoining course. When he was done he had the oddest of scores, a 1-putt triple bogey that he had to fight off the rest of the day.
That he succeeded was a reminder that the only people who scramble better than Phil Mickelson work as breakfast cooks at the diner.
Mickelson ended up with an even-par 70, leaving him 1-over for the tournament, 10 shots off the lead and 1 shot off the cutline. The other way to look at it is if that opening triple bogey was simply a par he’s 3-under for the day and 2-under for the tournament. That’s why they call swings like his opening drive “the big miss” because if you make such a swing you’ll often soon be missing from the tournament.
That he isn’t is testimony to his grit and his shot making. That he had to show so much of each yesterday is testimony that he can be his own worst enemy.
While Mickelson was scrambling, McIlroy continued what have become mysterious putting woes, derailing his season if one can call a season with six top 10s, a win at the Irish Open and a T10 at the Masters and T5 at the British Open derailed. For most golfers on tour that would be a career year, but McIlroy is not most golfers, even though he played like one here.
He, Day, Jordan Spieth and, of late, Dustin Johnson are the Big Four of a sport that usually fixates on the Big Three except during the Tiger Woods years when he was Gladys Knight and everyone else on Tour was the Pips.
In reality, Johnson was gone after one day after an opening round 77 and yesterday McIlroy joined him when he bogeyed 18 by chunking a wedge that rolled back to his feet. But the reason it came down to that was he putted all week like he needs to visit his old putting coach, Dave Stockton.
McIlroy thus completed an odd major season. He was top 10 in two majors, including top five at the British Open only a couple of weeks ago, but failed to make the cut in the other two, the U.S. Open and the PGA. Call it the Strange Case of Dr. Bogey and Mr. Birdie. How does one account for this from a player as talented as McIlory, who is in the prime of his career? Two statistics tell the story. In putts from 15 to 20 feet, he is No. 2 on the PGA Tour. Yet in putting from inside 10 feet, where the real money is made, he ranks 187th. Keep missing short putts, as he did yesterday, and you end up where he is today — home.
“Tee to green was good but it was just pathetic when I got onto the green,” McIlroy admitted after a 1-under 69 wasn’t good enough to save him after an opening round of 4-over 74 put him in scramble mode as well.
“I need to go do something. I need to figure out what to do on the greens. I need to have a long, hard think about that. Putting let me down at (Oakmont, where the U.S. Open was played). Then putting let me down here again. I think if you had given anyone else in this field my tee shots this week, they would have been up near the top of the leaderboard. It just shows how bad I was around the greens.
“I’ve hit the ball really well this week and I’m walking away not playing the weekend. It’s really disheartening. I need to go back to the drawing board and see where we go from here.”
Where he should go is back to Stockton because McIlroy’s best putting came when he was his putting instructor. Short of that, it’s a mystery where to turn.
Day, on the other hand, continued what has been a solid season with eight top-10 finishes, four top-3s and three wins, including at the Players, which the pros call the fifth major.
He was in the top 10 at the Masters and U.S. Open before finishing T22 at the British and now he’s 2 off the lead at the PGA on moving day and coming off a 5-under 65 in which he was on fire on the back nine. That allowed him to recover when several times he tottered on the edge of the Big Miss himself.
It would take a golfing miracle for Mickelson to get back into this tournament today, although he has often been the author of them. It would take two more days like yesterday for Day to become the first to go back-to-back in the PGA since Woods in 2006 and 2007.
As for what it will take for McIlroy to put his game back together, the answer is clearer. He needs to find a putter that knows how to behave.