Rory McIlroy has been golf’s nearly man for the last few months and the Holywood man nearly put together a really good opening round at Carnoustie on day one of the Alfred Dunhill Championship.
McIlroy made just the one bogey on which is traditionally the toughest of the three courses, but failed to take advantage of the scorable par-4s in ideal scoring conditions but his three-under opening round keeps him in with a chance of capturing his fourth tournament win of 2024.
“Yeah, it was okay,” he summarised his round afterwards. “A bit slow to get out of the blocks. I actually played very nice on our front nine, which is the back nine. Missed a lot of opportunities, and then maybe a little scrappier on the back. But yeah, overall, it was a perfect day to play Carnoustie. I probably didn’t quite take advantage of the conditions the way that I wanted to or should have but yeah, a solid round and something to try to build upon tomorrow at Kingsbarns.”
McIlroy last played in the event in 2022, and is playing alongside father Gerry who is about to have another landmark birthday over the weekend. Despite coming close on several occasions, they have yet to win the event as a partnership, nor has Rory managed to win the individual portion. And he feels that both he and Gerry will need to step it up a gear if they’re to improve on that statistic this week.
“He didn’t play very well at all,” he said. “He bettered me by two, which was nice, but there’s definitely room for improvement there for both of the McIlroys. Lovely to be out here with him. We’ve done this a few time before. It’s his 65th birthday on Saturday. So to be able to stroll around the Old Course with him on the 65th is going to be a pretty cool occasion. Delighted to be out here with him, and hopefully we can make a few more birdies tomorrow.”
With the course dubbed ‘Carnasty’ out of the way and the favourable Kingsbarns to come tomorrow, there is plenty of scope for a trademark McIlroy – or in this case, McIlroys – charge up the leaderboard on the course that accounts for the top two round one scores and seven of the top 10.
“I think so,” Rory said when asked if he was looking forward to tackling Kingsbarns. “It’s nice to get Carnoustie out of the way. It’s a course whereas I said, we had perfect conditions for it. So I feel like I could have taken advantage of it a bit more. But yeah, Kingsbarns, a course here, if you do get decent conditions, obviously historically, there’s been a lot of low scoring. So you know, try to get out there tomorrow and shoot a low one and get myself into the tournament.”
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