Standing in a fairway bunker on the 15th hole at The Renaissance Club, Rory McIlroy was looking down at his ball and he didn’t like what he saw. The ball was in a small valley within the sand, and the valley was one of McIlroy’s own making, catching his ambitious initial effort a little thin and watching it ricochet back off the bunker face and nestle into the bottom of the groove he’d just dug out. Now, he had no choice but to splash out sideways.
Level-par on the day, he was staring a double bogey in the face. 45 minutes or so later, he was picking his ball out of the cup on the 18th green having just rolled in his third successive birdie after getting up-and-down from 151 yards for bogey on 15.
There’s a long way to go, and ultimately it might count for very little, but should he find himself contending on Sunday afternoon, then he might just look back at that bogey-save on the opening day as the springboard off which his tournament launched.
“Yeah, that was a good bogey in the end,” he said, understating the obvious. “But yeah, it was a great finish. Felt like the round was a bit stop start, a little bit of rust in there taking a couple of weeks off but felt like I found my rhythm and started hitting better shots on the way in.
“It was a good opening round. It’s the sort of golf course and the sort of conditions where I feel like the field is going to be pretty bunched. So to only be four behind after the first day, you know, feeling like I’ve still got my best stuff ahead of me, that feels good.”
For a player who, by his own admission, climbed his golfing Everest back in April, the Genesis Scottish Open is base camp in comparison, but perhaps the closest he’ll come to facing Everest again is next week when he returns to his homeland and to Royal Portrush as the reigning Masters champion and as a man with unfinished business given what transpired in 2019.
But if 100% is where he needs to be when he heads to the Dunluce Course’s first tee next Thursday, he admits that he’s got a ways to go yet.
“Probably like 80 percent,” he said when asked to assess where he’s at right now. “Felt like I struggled a lot in left-to-right winds today.
“Right-to-left wind, I was fine. Felt very comfortable sort of holding the ball against it. The last three holes were in off the right which was comfortable but some of the holes where I got myself in trouble the tee shots were left-to-right and let it go in the wind a bit too much.
“It’s been hard, like all last week, I was hitting balls in the wind, it was off the right and the range here is right-to-left. So haven’t had much of an opportunity to hit balls in a different wind direction.
“So the next three days gives me that opportunity to get a bit more comfortable with that.”
He admitted to struggling with his motivation post-Augusta, but the return back across the Atlantic has quelled any lingering doubts he may have had about his desire to add more big titles and more major championships.
“Yeah I’m ready to play,” he said. “The change of scenery has been nice. It’s been nice to get back over here. That renewed my excitement and enthusiasm for the rest of the season, so yeah, of course.”
Leave a comment