Rory McIlroy reacts to Open horror show at Royal Troon

It looked for all the world like Rory McIlroy would respond. 

A cathartic walk through New York and a re-energising top-five finish at the Scottish Open in East Lothian meant that McIlroy arrived here at Royal Troon with a spring in his step and a US Open collapse out of mind.

There was even room for early optimism, too.

McIlroy’s level-par aggregate through seven holes seemed a solid start on a dreich Troon morning where a complete change in wind direction and persistent rain was throwing his competitors way off course.

But then he reached the Postage Stamp. The iconic par-3 which played 118 yards on Thursday is “a simple hole but it doesn’t take much of a mistake to pay a severe price,” – as Tiger Woods put it on Tuesday.

Wise words.

McIlroy’s wedge flared just right of the pin, landed on the green and looked to have set up a birdie chance, before trickling down into the sand trap short right. Perhaps cautious of ‘the Coffin’ bunker beyond, his second then came up just shy of the tiny green and – humiliatingly – rolled back towards him.

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What looked like a potential two quickly became a five. More painstaking evidence for McIlroy of golf’s brutally fine margins.

“Yeah, difficult day,” he sighed, after a seven-over 78 that left his Open chances hanging by a thread. “I felt like I did okay for the first part of the round and then missed the green at the Postage Stamp there and left it in and made a double.”

“But still, felt like I was in reasonable enough shape being a couple over through nine, thinking that I could maybe get those couple shots back, try to shoot even par, something like that.”

Yet McIlroy never recovered.

“Then hitting the ball out of bounds on 11, making a double there,” he continued in a notably short post-round exchange with reporters. McIlroy was forced to reload after finding the train tracks on that devilish par-4.

“Even though the wind on the back nine was helping, it was a lot off the left. I was actually surprised how difficult I felt like the back nine played. I thought we were going to get it a little bit easier than we did.”

McIlroy has played every practice round on this South Ayrshire links with the wind on the front and a stiff breeze into his face coming home. On another day of major misery, he couldn’t adjust to the unknown.

“I guess when that happens, you play your practice rounds, you have a strategy that you think is going to help you get around the golf course,” he said, “but then when you get a wind you haven’t played in, it starts to present different options and you start to think about maybe hitting a few clubs that you haven’t hit in practice.”

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The groans from the huge galleries down the stretch signalled that McIlroy had bogeyed two of his final four holes, leaving him ten shots behind the early pacesetter Justin Thomas.

“Your misses get punished a lot more this week than even last week or even, geez, any weeks, whether you miss it in a fairway bunker or even the rough,” he said. “The rough, the balls that I hit in the rough today, the lies were pretty nasty.

“You just get penalised more for your misses.”

Suddenly McIlroy has to accept that he may have forgiven his chance at immediate Pinehurst redemption already.

The last time he started an Open this badly was at Royal Portrush in 2019, when he shot 79 after hitting his first shot of his home tournament out of bounds. There, a stirring 65 on Friday was still not enough for McIlroy to make the weekend. His expectations have understandably nose-dived.

“I mean, all I need to focus on is tomorrow and try to make the cut,” he stressed. “That’s all I can focus on.

“I need to go out there and play better and try to shoot something under-par and at least be here for the weekend, if not try to put myself up the leaderboard a bit more and feel like I have half a chance.”

Ben Parsons is the Senior Writer at bunkered and is the man to come to for all of the latest news, across both the professional and amateur games. Formerly of The Mirror and Press Association, he is a member at Halifax Golf Club and is a long-suffering fan of both Manchester United and the Wales rugby team.