Closing stretch grief for McIlroy

GOLF THE PLAYERS' CHAMPIONSHIP:YOU CAN play the infamous 17th hole all you like on the playstation. You can hit balls for fun in practice. But, when it really matters, the little par three at Sawgrass usually has the last laugh.

Yesterday, in his debut appearance in the Players championship, Rory McIlroy - just a matter of three days after he left his teenage years behind him - became yet another victim of the devilish hole.

In running up a triple-bogey six there, airmailing the green off the tee and findingwater again on the 18th to rub further salt into his wounds, McIlroy’s round was transformed.

Instead of signing for a sub-par round, those late mishaps - four dropped shots in his closing two holes - meant the 20-year-old from Holywood signed for an opening 74, two over.

On a day when American Ben Crane set the pace with a seven-under-par 65, with the course generally rewarding those who were accurate off the tee and followed up with a gentle touch with the putter on Bermuda grass greens that were slippery and fast, McIlroy wasn’t alone in feeling the wrath of the 17th as Steve Lowery took a quintuple eight on the hole after incurring two penalty shots.

Indeed, an indication of the fickleness of the TPC at Sawgrass’s was demonstrated by the fate that befell David Toms. Although he signed for a 67 to be just one shot off the pace set by the early leaders, American John Mallinger and Sweden’s Richard S Johnson, Toms had looked poised to break the course record - a 63 jointly held by Fred Couples and Greg Norman - until he threw shots away over the closing stretch.

Toms was eight-under through 14 holes only to bogey three of his last four holes. “I’m just glad to get off the course. It was going downhill the last few holes. I can attribute that to not being committed on a course where you have to be (totally) committed,” remarked Toms, while Tiger Woods’s opening round 71 had him lamenting some missed early birdie putts. “I was in position all day to make putts and just didn’t do it . . . this is probably the highest score I could have shot. I didn’t get a whole lot out of my round.“

If McIlroy - who’d reached two under on his round when rolling in a four-footer on the 16th - was left to agonise over a triple bogey-bogey finish that left him fighting to survive the midway cut, Graeme McDowell could at least reflect on a solid opening round 71, one under, that promised even more.

McDowell started with a bogey on the 10th, his opening hole, where he hooked his tee shot left and could only hit his recovery shot back 20 yards into a fairway bunker. In the circumstances, a bogey was a decent result and he kicked on with birdies on the 11th (from four feet), 18th (from 14 feet) and second (from five feet) before dropping a shot on the par-three eighth, his penultimate hole, where he missed the green with his tee shot.

Pádraig Harrington, meanwhile, was even par for his round after two birdies and two bogeys before the turn and another of each immediately after it. The Dubliner birdied the two par fives on the front, the second and the ninth, but suffered bogeys on the third, where he was bunkered, and the fifth when he pulled his drive into the left rough and failed to find the green with his approach.

Johnson, who missed the cut in his last two tournaments, found form out of the blue as he joined Mallinger in the clubhouse lead. The Swede, who started at the 10th, birdied three of his first six holes and reached the turn in 32. “The three of us in our group were just firing from the first hole. It wasn’t playing that hard, there was no wind. If you’re in the right position, as the pins were, you can get a lot of short putts because they were in little swales and hollows.”

Defending champion Sergio Garcia fired three birdies in his opening four holes but could only manage a 71, one under. “It’s been a while since I hit the ball that badly. The way I played, 71 is not that bad a score,” claimed Garcia.