Rónán MacNamara in Royal Troon
Dressed in black, Rory McIlroy’s Open chances didn’t end in the coffin but they died on the railway line.
Two double bogeys struck fatal blows to McIlroy’s quest to win a second Claret Jug and a first major in a decade. The Holywood man was postage stamped when he took two thumps out of the coffin bunker on the 8th while Scotsrail picked up his ball off the 11th tee. If the train had stopped for Rory, he might have boarded it.
“Yeah, difficult day. 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,” McIlroy lamented in front of a packed mixed zone as his playing partner Tyrrell Hatton spoke to just one journalist on the other side.
“But still, felt like I was in reasonable enough shape being a couple over through 9, thinking that I could maybe get those couple shots back, try to shoot even par, something like that.
“Then hitting the ball out of bounds on 11, making a double there. 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.”
Known for his resilience and his ability to bounce back from setbacks in his career, an opening 78 at the 152nd Open Championship in Royal Troon only raises more concerns over the lingering scar tissue from Pinehurst last month.
It looked and felt like a funeral.
Told by the great Raymie Burns that the changed wind of into off the right on the front nine and down off the left on the back nine would play away from McIlroy’s strengths, it was an on the button call by one of golf’s great and most knowledgeable voices.
A wind to neutralise the assets of the big boys and bunch the field together an early look at the leaderboard would suggest as much.
McIlroy’s mission to win that elusive fifth major title began slowly with a sloppy opening bogey. A birdie on the third to put him back on par would be his only red mark of the day.
Despite making steady pars from there, the 35-year-old looked more agitated than he needed to be just a third into his opening round at The Open as a couple of good opportunities went begging.
Troon was eerily quiet and what transpired next had the crowd mourning rather than motivating.
Then the first of two disasters struck when McIlroy’s ball appeared to pitch and stop on the right edge of the 8th green before it agonisingly trickled into one of the coffin bunkers. Two slaps later and he was tapping in for a double bogey five.
From there, McIlroy’s golf was awful. A dropped shot on the tenth before a double bogey on 11 after hitting his tee shot out of bounds towards the railway line on the right put his Open chances on life support.
Amazingly, despite all the nonsense that Max Homa played to that point, he walked to the 12th tee one shot clear of the Northern Irishman.
Rory compounded his misery with a dropped shot on 15 and a closing bogey on 18 after finding another coffin bunker on the closing hole.
Fifteen of the last sixteen winners of the Open have broken par in the opening round while the greatest variation between two successive rounds by a champion is eleven shots by Greg Norman who carded a first round 74 in 1986 and second round 63.
Meanwhile, back on the other side of the golf course, Tiger Woods took jus three holes to card as many birdies as McIlroy did in his first round.
In the post round mixed zone, McIlroy was asked whether he could come back from the ten shot gap between himself and Justin Thomas at the time of writing. He grimaced, tilted his head from side to side, rolled his eyes and said: “I mean, all I need to focus on is tomorrow and try to make the cut. That’s all I can focus on.”
McIlroy last lifted a major title, his fourth at the 2014 PGA Championship in Valhalla. There have been 20 top-10 finishes in major championships since then but genuine chances have been few and far between in that spell. Pinehurst being the first major he let slip from his grasp.
On the route back from the 13th hole to the media centre, one of the spectator activities gives children and adults the opportunity to chip balls into a washing machine like Rory did so famously as a child.
McIlroy may as well hang out the washing.
The only player to shoot an over-par opening round and still win the Claret Jug since 2006 is Pádraig Harrington (Birkdale 2008), who acknowledged me while walking to the first tee on Thursday afternoon.
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