Magical McIlroy stumbles at his moment of truth
PERHAPS once or twice in a lifetime will a player walk off the course disappointed and frustrated with a 64, but such was the lot of Rory McIlroy at the Players Championship yesterday.
On the positive side, four-and-ahalf hours of sheer brilliance transformed his position from worrying about making the halfway cut to having a real shot at victory this weekend in the best stroke play event outside the majors.
There is no chance of it happening, however, if there are too many repeats of the 10 minutes of carelessness with which he completed his day’s work and led to his immediate feelings of regret.
McIlroy seemed destined to become the first man ever to shoot 62 at Sawgrass but at the par-five ninth — his final hole — he took four blows from nowhere to run up an ugly six. Such has been the story of his season to date and the frustration showed.
‘Yeah, I’m disappointed right now,’ he conceded. ‘Frustrated as well. It should have been a couple better.’
The anguish will not have lasted long, mind, for if someone had offered him an eight-under-par total at the start he’d have snapped their hand off.
At 8.43am on another gorgeous Florida morning, McIlroy had stepped on to the 10th tee in tied 81st place.
Goodness, you’d have thought Shane Lowry (right) would have had rather longer to enjoy being the only man ever to shoot 29 over the revered back nine.
As it turned out, he had less than 24 hours as another of Irish hue enjoyed a similarly enchanted carpet ride over that stretch of holes filled with risk — Andy Sullivan needed 42 strokes to negotiate them — but also reward.
We all know what a streaky putter McIlroy can be, so when he began by holing a 25-footer at the 10th it led to an immediate spring in his stride.
A lovely bunker shot set up another birdie at the 11th and then came two more birdies at the 12th and 13th. He birdied the 15th and then holed from 50 feet for an eagle at the 16th.
As he made his way around the lake to the 17th tee, several spectators among the enormous gallery could scarcely believe it. ‘Holy Cow!’ exclaimed one. ‘Seven under after seven!’
It was almost eight under after eight when his 50-foot birdie putt at this island green hole stopped on the lip. At the 18th he missed from 12 feet for a 28.
We knew his back nine would be more prosaic. How could it not be? There were also McIlroy’s eyeopening statistics to consider.
In the last four years, before this round, he had played the back nine in 37 under but the front nine in 13 over. Now those numbers have become 44 under and 12 over — a startling 56-shot difference.
He will need to do something about that this weekend if he is to finally solve the Sawgrass puzzle. AUSTRALIA’S Andrew Dodt extended his lead to three strokes at the AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open after shooting a two-under-par 70 in the second round at Anahita.
Rory seemed destined to be first to shoot a Sawgrass 62!