McIlroy says trying to copy speed of DeChambeau was mistake
Swinging faster and hitting the ball longer worked for U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau.
Rory McIlroy tried to copy him and said Friday it was a mistake.
McIlroy posted his worst 36-hole score since 2013, following his 79 in the opening round with a 75 to miss the cut by 10 shots at The Players Championship. This came one week after a 4-over weekend at Bay Hill cost him a chance to win.
He attributed the problems to trying to be like DeChambeau, minus the protein shakes and 40 additional pounds.
“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t anything to do with what Bryson did at the U.S.
Open,” McIlroy said in candid comments following his second missed cut in four events, after going two years without a weekend off.
“I think a lot of people saw that and were like, ‘Whoa, if this is the way they’re going to set golf courses up in the future, it helps. It really helps.’”
It hasn’t done much for him.
McIlroy said he was frustrated by swing issues he said dates to October — one month after DeChambeau blasted away at Winged Foot and, with a superb wedge game out of the rough, won the U.S. Open by six shots.
The bulk on DeChambeau was to be able to handle swinging harder and faster to generate more distance. McIlroy said he started doing some speed training and “started getting sucked into that stuff.”
“Swing got flag, long and too rotational,” he said. “Obviously, I added some speed and am hitting the ball longer, but what that did to my swing as a whole probably wasn’t a good thing. So I’m sort of fighting to get back out of that. That’s what I’m frustrated with.”
McIlroy, whose last victory was in Shanghai in the fall of 2019, was among the hottest players in golf until the pandemic shut down the PGA Tour for three months. When he returned, he went eight straight events without a top 10.
He felt his game slowly turning around at the Tour Championship and the U.S. Open.
“I sort of look back at Winged Foot and I look at my swing there, and I would be pretty happy with that again,” he said. “And then after Winged Foot I had a few weeks before we went to the West Coast and I started to try to hit the ball a bit harder, hit a lot of drivers, get a bit more speed, and I felt like that was sort of the infancy of where these swing problems have come from.
“So it’s just a matter of trying to get back out of it.”
Now it’s time for a break. He set an ambitious schedule at the start of the year. The Players Championship was his seventh event in eight weeks. McIlroy will not play next week in the Honda Classic, or at the Valero Texas Open a week before the Masters. His only event is the Dell Match Play in two weeks, where only having a better score than the opponent in all that really matters.
TAMPA, FLA. (AP) » Corey Kluber overcame occasional wildness, allowing two runs and four hits over four innings in his second start, and the New York Yankees beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 7-5 on Saturday.
Kluber is a two-time Cy Young Award winner with his third team in three years. He has thrown one inning since being hit on the right forearm by a comebacker in May 2019, none since tearing a muscle in his right shoulder in his Texas debut last July 26. That injury ended his season after one inning.
Kluber hit two batters, threw a wild pitch and allowed a third-inning solo homer to Troy Stokes Jr. He struck out two in an outing when the Pirates went down in order just once.
“Some pitches, probably, could have been located a little better, been a little sharper” Kluber said. “The home run, first pitch, left it a little too much over the plate. Definitely some stuff to work on. Fine tuning location, things like that.”
“I was happy with the way I felt physically,” he said.
The right-hander allowed a leadoff double and hit a batter in the first inning but got out of the jam with a double play. After a perfect second, Kluber gave Stokes’ homer and then avoided further damage by working out of a two-on, one-out situation.
Kluber, who turns 35 in April, struck out three over two perfect innings in his other start on March 3 against Toronto. He had a live batting practice session five days later.
After losing to the eventual AL champion Tampa Bay Rays in a five-game Division Series last year, the Yankees allowed Masahiro Tanaka, James Paxton and J.A. Happ to become free agents. They signed Kluber to an $11 million, one-year contract and acquired Jameson Taillon from Pittsburgh for four prospects.
“Looks like himself,” Yankees second baseman DJ LeMahieu said, “Ball’s moving all over the place.”
New York’s projected rotation also includes ace Gerrit Cole and Jordan Montgomery. Deivi García and Domingo Germán are among the candidates for the fifth starter spot.
Kyle Busch nearly started it in Friday’s truck race, restarting 25th with 31 laps left and nearly coming all the way back — John Hunter Nemechek held him off. Then it was AJ Allmendinger on Saturday, getting a win in his first full-time season since 2018. And finally Kyle Larson on Sunday, grabbing an early-season trophy in his comeback campaign. And barely below the surface, you’ll see something potentially promising for the future.
Go ahead, give it up
Allmendinger is part of the three-car Kaulig Racing effort for the 2021 Xfinity Series season. Team owner Matt Kaulig is also fielding a part-time Cup car this year, with eyes on buying a charter and going full-time in Cup next year. The Cup Series has been hungry for new, younger ownership that works through the system successfully, and this might be the one.
— Ken Willis