Rory McIlroy found it difficult to be the central character in the drama, even within his own three-ball as he ventured forth – the right foot without its pinky nail no longer an issue – in the first round of the 108th US PGA Championship.
A case in point. The loudest reaction, which came from the endeavours of a group featuring the marquee names of McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Jon Rahm came on the second hole.
Rahm had played up to that point, their 11th hole, with a putter that was colder than the Arctic; but when the Spaniard holed out with a wedge shot from 101 yards for an eagle two, his grumpiness was replaced by a broad grin as Grumpy became Happy and the galleries reacted with wild, guttural roars to his audaciousness.
While Rahm and Spieth exchanged fist bumps in the middle of the fairway, McIlroy was in his own world, alone in a fairway bunker preparing to play his second shot. The roars in his direction had been few and far between, in a round ultimately of 74 strokes where he grinded and grinded until the wheels finally fell off.
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McIlroy, on this occasion, was the poor guy of the trio.
Rahm’s round was going nowhere for a long time until that hole-out eagle two was followed by another chip-in for birdie on the eighth as he posted a one-under-par 69, while Spieth – needing the Wanamaker Trophy to complete the career Grand Slam – was accuracy personified off the tee for much of his round in posting 69, albeit marred by two bogeys in his closing three holes.
But Rahm and Spieth were content with their lot. Not McIlroy.
McIlroy cut a frustrated figure on finishing with a three-putt bogey on the ninth to rub salt into wounds, that bogey completing a miserable run which started on the sixth: a sequence of 5-5-4-6 that equated to bogey-bogey-bogey-bogey.
“S**t!” responded McIlroy, when asked what he thought of his day.
His later narrative, though, contained a more composed understanding of how things had gone awry, having negotiated the tougher back nine first (turning in level par, an opening bogey on the 10th where he clipped a tree and got a poor lie followed by a birdie on the 11th and then seven straight pars). But the finish brought one error after another.
“I started missing fairways,” said McIlroy, reflecting on right misses on the fourth, the sixth, the seventh and the ninth as his driver disobeyed. I didn’t have great angles either. Then obviously you start missing it just off the edges of these greens, it gets tricky. I felt like I did okay. I made that birdie on five to get back to even-par after the soft bogey on four, then I just got on that bogey train at the end.”
McIlroy acknowledged: “I’m just not driving the ball well enough. It’s been a problem all year for the most part. I miss it right, and then I want to try to correct it. And then I’ll overdo it, and I’ll miss it left. It’s a little bit of back and forth that way. So that’s pretty frustrating, especially when like I pride myself on driving the ball well.
“I just need to try to figure it out. I honestly thought I’d figured it out. Coming in here, I hit it well on Sunday at Quail Hollow, and then hit it good at home on Monday. Then, obviously, I had to curtail the practice round Tuesday [due to toe injury], but hit it decent yesterday. Once I get under the gun, it just seems like it starts to go a little bit wayward on me.”
