USA TODAY International Edition
Switching putters, McIlroy works to get back into swing
CROMWELL, CONN. Rory McIlroy attacked the practice green with an assortment of putters before Saturday’s third round of the Travelers Championship.
The Irishman, 28, was lucky to even have another round at TPC River Highlands after bogeying two of the final three holes and squeezing in at the even cut line.
“I’m trying to knock a little rust out of my game,” he said after a 3- over second round Friday.
In the third round at TPC, McIlroy looked to polish up his game with a different putter in his bag. After testing four models in his pre- round routine, gone was the spider model, which he used to finish 114th in strokes gained putting ( which measures the number of putts a golfer takes relative to the PGA Tour average) on Friday.
In its place, he went to work with a half- mallet putter that produced similar results to his previous one.
“I saw him with three or four on the putting green before I went out,” Paul Casey said. “I fall out of love with putters all the time. Having said that, I’ve always predominantly stayed with the same style of putter for the last decade or longer.”
No matter which club he uses, after missing the U. S. Open cut following a six- week absence with a rib injury, McIlroy needs the competitive work.
“In a perfect world, last week wouldn’t have been my first week back at the U. S. Open,” said McIlroy, who shot even- par 70 Saturday with two birdies and two bogeys. “It’s a high- pressure, high- stress sort of event. I just hit my stride a little too late.
“I played well the last nine holes on Friday ( at the Open), and I was just trying to shake the rust off before that.”
The British Open, which will be played at Royal Birkdale Golf Club in Southport, England, is less than four weeks away.
McIlroy will head home after this event and play in two weeks at The Rory Foundation- hosted Irish Open and the Scottish Open before moving to the third major of the season.
McIlroy and Jason Day, who missed the cut, are the only players ranked in the world’s top five who don’t have a victory this season.
As McIlroy heads into his 10th year of professional golf, a lot of changes have come in his life of late. His marriage to Erica Stoll in April and a switch from Nike to Taylor Made equipment top the list.
“If I look back over 10 years, am I happy with where my career is at? I would say yes, I guess,” he said. “But I definitely feel like in the next 10 years — 2018 to 2027 — I can do better.”
McIlroy has done rather well in the first chapter of his career with 13 wins on both the European and PGA Tours, including four majors. However, after winning the Open and PGA Championship in 2014, he has come up empty on golf’s biggest stages, in part, because of injuries.
“Yeah, it feels like the first 10 years of my career are nearly over,” he said. “Not quite yet, I still have two majors to play in. So, I’d like to try and finish that 10 years very well.”
Ironically, surviving the first cut at the Travelers took McIlroy back to a spot he was in early in his career. At 20, he skirted the chopping block at Quail Hollow and went on to capture his first PGA Tour event.
With leader Jordan Spieth part of a stacked leaderboard here, it figures to be an open race to victory Sunday. McIlroy pointed out that this course has historically produced low scores, including Jim Furyk’s 58 last year.
“We have seen here in the past guys going out and shooting a low score to get themselves back into the tournament,” McIlroy said.