Mcilroy’s admits ‘brain-dead’ play on his way to 79

TIT FOR TAT — The preOpen Championship war of words between Sir Nick Faldo and Rory McIlroy, whose work habits and focus Faldo questioned, didn’t settle anything once the stage shifted to the golf course.

Faldo, who hadn’t played competitively in three years, and McIlroy, 24, the former world No. 1 and winner of two major championships in the last two years, both shot eight-over-par 79. That’s really not bad for Faldo, on his 56th birthday, but a disaster for the young Irishman, who seems to be completely lacking in confidence.

“It was scary going to the first tee,” Faldo said. “And I thought I settled down all right after that and hit some decent shots. But it’s just too ... slippery. You wait until you get the real golfers in here.”

McIlroy, clearly distraught after making two doublebogeys and four bogeys in a back-nine 42, called some of his play “brain-dead. Seriously, I feel like I’ve been walking around out there like that for the last couple of months.

“It’s strange, I mean I wish I could stand up here and tell you guys what’s wrong or what I need to do to make it right, because I feel like I’ve got the shots.

“It’s just a matter of going through the right thought process to hit them, and I obviously haven’t been doing that lately.

“I’m definitely under-thinking on the golf course, maybe over-thinking off of it.”

FORE RIGHT! — Tiger Woods needed a penalty drop to escape the hay after a snap hook that amazingly found a tree to hit on his opening tee shot of the Open, but it could have been worse. Lloyd Saltman blocked two tee shots into the corporate tented village right of the No. 1 fairway, and made a quadruple-bogey eight en route to a 79.

Woods took an unplayable lie penalty, dropped in the rough, muscled his third shot into a greenside bunker and got up-and-down for a bogey five, a good save en route to a two-under-par 69.

OL’ WHATSISNAME — The 2004 Open champion, Todd Hamilton, who basically came from nowhere at age 38 to beat Ernie Els in a playoff at Troon, shot his first Open round in the 60s since that day, getting around Thursday in 69.

The 47-year-old had missed four cuts in a row in this championship, and six of eight since his 2004 win.

“Terrible,” Hamilton said of the past nine years. “I try not to reflect on it. There’s been days where I didn’t want to play.

“I definitely thought my golfing career would have been better after that than it was. Looking back, though, I had done a lot of good things overseas at places (Japan, the Asian Tour) that people probably wouldn’t know that golf even exists. So when I won the Open, I was 38, I was kind of at the end or close to the end of a decent career. I thought it was decent. I just didn’t do it on the European Tour or PGA Tour.”

This year, he’s played mostly on the Web.com Tour, where he’s missed seven cuts in 10 tournaments.

“My two boys are interested a little bit. They play hockey. That’s their main sport. But I’m still out there playing, hitting balls, practising a lot. “

NO TRAUMA — Firstround leader Zach Johnson was asked how he had managed to recover from his Sunday playoff loss to Jordan Speith at the John Deere Classic.

“I had forgotten about it until you just mentioned it,” joked Johnson. “No, I’m teasing. But I think you have to (forget it.) It wasn’t like there was a whole lot of negative there. This game demands resilience on the golf course, each round, each hole, and day to day.

“If anything from last week, what I’ve embraced is that I’m playing great, and I can put that into play, and I’m confident in my routines, confident in my walk out there, confident in my lines.”