A BLACK DAY FOR MOODY McILROY
McILROY FACES ANOTHER MISSED CUT IN SCOTLAND
AFTER the now celebrated journey by ferry across the Irish Sea came a round from Rory McIlroy to make anyone feel queasy. No jokes please about him being more in need of a lifeboat after a shocking 74 in the first round of the AAM Scottish Open yesterday.
Usually the most easy-going of creatures, McIlroy was left speechless by as poor a display with his short irons as he can ever have delivered. Asked by his manager what media commitments he would like to undertake, he replied ‘nothing’ and walked on for what was undoubtedly an afternoon of soul-searching.
That was in sharp contrast to fellow Irishman Padraig Harrington who put himself right in the mix in a group of six behind leader Mirko Illonen with a 67.
The spotlight, though, remains on McIlroy. The facts about the early stages of his round almost beggar belief. Beginning in a virtual flat calm, McIlroy striped every drive down the first four fairways and yet stood on the 14th tee, his fifth hole, at four over par. Yes, you read that correctly. On three holes in-a-row from the 11th he had a wedge in his hand of varying degrees and never hit the green with any of them. One finished in a bunker and the other two came up short, with the second of those ending up in a burn.
McIlroy spoke on Wednesday of trying to get less steep on his swing with his wedges but here it looked like a work in regress. This wasn’t one step backward to make a couple in the opposite direction, it was more like five.
Has he got enough time to pitch up in any shape to make a decent fist of challenging for the Claret Jug next week? For the second successive week he’s outside the top 100 after the first round and under considerable pressure to come up with a vastly improved performance today, for heading to Birkdale on the back of two successive missed halfway cuts is unthinkable.
What on earth must the goodly number of spectators who’d risen early thought about what they were watching during these early stages?
By McIlroy’s side was Open champion Henrik Stenson. The last time he was in these parts, he played the finest round in Open history down the road at Royal Troon. Here he hooked wildly into the left rough on the first and needed three hacks before his ball emerged, on his way to a triple bogey seven.
There’s nothing like this game for bringing a man back down to earth. Alongside them, Rickie Fowler could have been forgiven for thinking he was still taking part in the pro-am. The American did at least give the gallery what they had come for as he demonstrated once more his love of links golf.
Quite how a 28-year-old who learned to play on a driving range in sunny California comes to be so adept at this form of the game is not easily explained but he plays it like he’s been doing so all his life. ‘The driving range was flat and the wind would pick up in the afternoon so I had to use my imagination and learn different shots,’ said Fowler, trying to help.
Fowler won this event the last time he played in it and few would rule out a successful defence of sorts after his skilfully crafted 67.
‘I was really bummed not to be able to return last year because of the schedule and the Olympics but it’s great to be back and to be able to get ready for The Open,’ he said. ‘Thursday is all about getting off to a good start and I did a great job of doing that.’
It was certainly something that proved beyond the capabilities of the two men who accompanied him, although at least Stenson fought back to reach the relative respectability of level par. McIlroy fought back too, although it was telling that three of the four birdies he mustered were on par fives.
The only one he managed after a short iron approach was at the seventh, and that was hardly following a blow of pinpoint accuracy, given he holed from 35ft.
That took him back to one over par but at the ninth he gambled, went hunting for a flag located close to a greenside bunker, and missed yet another green with a wedge. That was the thin end for McIlroy. In Colin Montgomerie country, he marked his bad round in a Monty like way by leaving without a word.
There again, after all his optimistic phrases on Wednesday, when he’d talked about how close he felt his game was to playing well, what was there to say?
After signing a mammoth deal to play 14 Taylor Made clubs in April, there were inevitably plenty ready to blame his woes on the new equipment, but does that really stand up? A man as good as McIlroy not able to adjust to short irons used successfully by many of his contemporaries? That doesn’t really make a lot of sense.
And so this exasperating season, heavily disrupted by two bouts of injury and now an alarming loss of form, stumbles on to the brink of The Open.
RORY McILROY faces the prospect of heading into next week’s Open Championship on the back of a third missed cut in four events after a poor start in the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open. McIlroy was hoping memories of his last appearance in the event would kickstart his injuryhit season, the world number four finishing 14th at Royal Aberdeen in 2014 before going on to win the Open, WGC Bridgestone Invitational and US PGA in his next three starts. But the 28-year-old carded a two-over-par 74 at Dundonald Links to end the day nine shots behind Finland’s Mikko Ilonen. McIlroy followed a missed cut in the US Open with a tie for 17th in the Travelers Championship, but then made an early exit from the Irish Open at Portstewart, where he was the defending champion.