It hasn’t been Rory McIlroy’s week for many reasons.
He hasn’t played well, and that’s the starting point. Of the 74 players who made the cut, only 23 have performed worse Tee-to-Green, and 44 have been statistically better off the tee. When you’re unable to rely on your superpowers, it’s always an uphill battle.
Saturday’s weather delay robbed him of the chance to play early, tackling a much easier golf course than the one he eventually faced from the back of the afternoon field. This was, in many ways, the final nail in the coffin.
He needed to shoot a round in the mid-to-low 60s to give himself a chance, but instead, he shot a 72.
Whether a 63 or 64 would have been possible if he’d gone out second instead of almost last is unknown, but there’s no use speculating. He shot what he shot, and he lies where he lies—tied for 49th going into the final round.
The Calendar Year Grand Slam dream is over, but realistically, it was never truly within reach. Not until he’d already claimed The Masters, The US PGA, and the US Open, and even then, adding the Open Championship at Portrush would have been a gargantuan task for all the same reasons—and more—that made winning The Masters so challenging.
The impact of being forced to swap out his TaylorMade Qi10 Driver head for another can never be fully gauged. But anyone who suggests it couldn’t have played a part doesn’t understand how finely tuned elite golfers are.
Back when Tiger Woods was testing new Nike drivers, the company sent him three prototypes. After hitting countless balls with each, Woods informed them he preferred the slightly heavier one. This confounded the Nike team, as the three were supposed to be identical in weight. Woods insisted one was heavier, and Nike weighed them, discovering he was right. One was heavier—by less than two grams.
Why? A little extra glue had unwittingly been used in construction.
To put two grams into context, a teaspoon of sugar weighs almost three times that. When combined with the roughly 200 grams of the driver head and the 60 or so grams in the shaft, identifying such a minuscule difference in overall weight is staggering.
As much as TaylorMade technicians tried to supply McIlroy with identical driver heads to swap in and out, there were likely subtle differences. So subtle that the average golfer would be none the wiser, but Rory McIlroy is not the average golfer.
Maybe he’d still have driven the ball poorly with the original driver that failed the conformity test – and every pro’s driver will eventually fail a conformity test if they hit enough balls with it – but maybe he wouldn’t. We’ll never know.
Was his preparation ideal? He admitted last week in Philadelphia that he felt a little rusty, and the week before, he’d taken a trip to New York to appear on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. But hindsight is 20/20. If he’d brought his best game to Quail Hollow, we’d all be praising his decision to take a break. And when you have your own plane, heading to the Big Apple for a night is far less time-consuming.
Whatever the reasons, he simply hasn’t played well this week.
After finally winning at Augusta National, many claimed the pressure was off. But when a Major Championship is on the line and you’re a pre-tournament favorite, the pressure can be reduced but never fully eliminated.
Given his course record here, he’ll be bitterly disappointed not to have at least an outside chance going into the final round.
At the start of the year, if you’d offered him wins at Pebble Beach, TPC Sawgrass, and Augusta National, he’d have accepted them eagerly. But having achieved all that in the first four months, if he doesn’t add at least two more wins and contend in at least one of the remaining two majors, he’ll be deeply disappointed.
He’ll go out in the final round at Quail Hollow and try to bulldoze his way into the top 20, maybe even the top 10 if he can get all cylinders firing. Then, he’ll take stock of what he needs to do to ensure that the Rory who shows up at Oakmont in a month’s time is much closer to the Rory who shone at Augusta National than the one who struggled at Quail Hollow.
Leave a comment