Rory McIlroy was laughing when he suggested that the next time he’d hit his driver – long been considered his most potent weapon – would be in Abu Dhabi for the first of the DP World Tour’s season-ending playoff events, but the world number two was true to his word and didn’t even put the big stick in the bag for the opening round of the DP World Tour India Championship.
Ever since players began to arrive at Delhi Golf Club early in the week, the precedence of accuracy over length had been a consistent talking point and McIlroy admitted that the risk/reward factor that usually tempts him to reach for his longest club wasn’t in his favour this week.
Instead, he opted to mostly hit a 2-iron off the tee – he can still hit tee shots <270 yards with it – and plotted his way to a three-under 69 that left him just outside the top 10 with the late starters yet to go out on course.
“It’s pretty tricky,” McIlroy said after his round. “You’re really trying to be as conservative as you can off the tee, you’re trying to pick off birdies on the par-5s and then maybe pick up a couple more, but yeah, it’s a tricky golf course and I thought some of the hole locations early on were really tricky. I think – you play a practice round or Pro-Am and the pins are all in the middle of the green, but then you get into tournament day and they start to tuck them away a little bit and the course definitely played a little tougher than I expected it to be.”
Starting on the back nine, he was fast out of the traps, chipping in for birdie from the fringe on the 10th, but missed par putts from five and seven feet on 10 and 11 to fall the wrong side of par. He had no problem taking care of the par-5s on the back nine, birdieing both of them, but he played the two on the front side in one-over. Particularly frustrating for the reigning Masters champion was the ‘six’ on the eighth, which dropped him back to -3 after picking up shots on two, three and seven.
And it was the tee shot that did the damage, missing the fairway left and he was only able to advance it 17 yards and couldn’t escape the rough.
But he was happy with his strategy of not even tempting himself with his driver.
“Yeah, the dog was out of the bag. It was having a sleep in the locker,” he joked. “Yeah, I was sort of thinking about it last night before I went to bed – I was like, ‘sometimes if you’re really conservative off a par-5 tee, you might need like a 5-wood into the green, but I’m never going to hit driver, so I’ve got 2-iron, 3-iron, 4-iron, all the way through, and then I’ve got a 5-wood in case I need to hit it for an approach shot on a par-5.
“But I don’t see any hole out there that you need to hit it more than 260, 270 off the tee.”
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