RORY JUST SHAPING UP
McIlroy aims to brush rust off his stroke for Brit Open
CROMWELL, Conn. — As every plumber and auto-body mechanic knows, removing rust is not an easy task. Rory McIlroy is learning the same applies when trying to remove it from your golf clubs. Or more accurately, from your golf swing.
McIlroy barely avoided missing the cut for the second straight tournament yesterday, making it into the weekend at the Travelers Championship right on the line, which fell to even par. That was better than a week ago, when he missed the cut at the U.S. Open for the second straight year. But as positives go, shooting a secondround 73 with four bogeys on the back side, including one at 18, didn’t leave him with much to hang his short-term hopes on.
Golfers are notorious for finding a silver lining behind every bogey, but after barely holding onto the ledge at TPC River Highlands to make the cut yesterday, McIlroy’s usually sunny disposition seemed as gray as the clouds looming overhead.
“Not many (positives) that I can see right now,” McIlroy said when asked what he could take away from that round. “I just hope I got another two rounds to play. Try to knock a little bit of the rust out of the game. Felt pretty good (Thursday) but today was tricky in the wind and sort of caught me up a few times.”
On 18, McIlroy was tripped up by more than the wind. As he began his down swing on his second shot his right foot suddenly slipped out from under him and he tottered backward as the club came through the ball, sending it well off line and setting up a closing bogey that momentarily gave him reason to think he might be heading back to Florida before he’d planned once again.
“My right foot completely came out from under me,” he said ruefully. “Obviously there was a tiny bit of drizzle. Maybe a little bit of surface water. Just don’t know. It was weird.
“As soon as I started down I felt it and I couldn’t stop. Not a very nice shot to finish with.”
Indeed not, but that’s the kind of season it’s been ever since he suffered a stress fracture in his rib cage in January. He rested for seven weeks and then came back and played well at the World Golf Championships-Mexico (T7), Arnold Palmer Invite (T4) and the Masters (T7), with a marriage to Erica Stoll at a medieval castle near Galway thrown in 13 days after the Masters just for good measure.
But perhaps all that activity took its toll, or maybe this is just an unlucky golfing season for McIlroy. Whatever it was, his ribs began to ache again and he hasn’t really been right since.
He struggled to perform up to his capabilities and pulled out of two scheduled events before playing erratically and ultimately dismally at the Open.
This week it’s been more of the same. Although McIlroy insisted at the start of the week that physically he was now feeling fine, it’s clear his game remains below par. Well, technically it was at par this week, which left him 8 shots behind tournament leader Jordan Spieth with a seemingly insurmountable 64 golfers between the two of them on the leaderboard.
Spieth, who began the day 1 shot ahead after a first-round 63, shot a 1-under 69 yesterday morning, then watched as a windy afternoon kept anyone from overtaking him. Patrick Reed (66) and Troy Merritt (68) were tied for second.
Experiencing this kind of struggle is not what McIlroy’s decision to play TPC River Highlands a week after the Open was supposed to net. River Highlands is known as a player-friendly track, where birdies can abound even in the kind of blustery conditions that arose yesterday. It is a place where swing issues have a good chance to work themselves out.
They still may for McIlroy but when a sore rib limits you to only eight starts this deep into the season it takes a toll on your game that not even the former No. 1 player in the world can easily pay off.
“There were a few loose shots out there,” McIlroy admitted. “I want to not forget about today but try to learn from it and hopefully play another couple of rounds to try to take something with me into this stretch over in Europe that’s coming up.”
That stretch will include the 146th British Open, being contested next month at Royal Birkdale. McIlroy would like nothing better than to be fit and ready to contend there for his fifth major championship, but he has two more rounds in front of him first that would seem to be more pressing at the moment.
“If I play the next two days like I played today I’m definitely (out of it),” he said gloomily. “I don’t know. I’ll see what happens but I won’t be thinking about trying to win the tournament from here. I’ll be thinking about trying to go and play a good, solid round of golf.”
To do that, Rory McIlroy has to knock a lot of rust off his putter and the rest of the clubs in his bag in a hurry.