Rory McIlroy’s hopes of a seventh major victory are dangling by a thread after he bogeyed his last four holes to slump to a four-over 74 on the opening day of the PGA Championship where former winner Pádraig Harrington and Tom McKibbin also failed to impress at Aronimink.
It was a day where nothing went right for McIlroy who is ranked outside the top-105 in every strokes gained metric including 118th in putting. The back to back Masters champion took 36 blows on the greens as he fell over his own shoelaces on his way to the clubhouse with bogeys on the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th to sit seven shots off the early pace set by Min Woo Lee, Aldrich Potgieter, Stephan Jaeger and Ryo Hisatsune.
“S**t” was McIlroy’s one word response when asked for his summation of the round and he was dead right.
Teeing off on the back nine, a bogey, birdie start was a steady one for McIlroy who then saw a catalogue of pars broken by a dropped shot on the par-4 4th. He showed his powers of recovery with a birdie at the par-3 5th to get back to level-par which would have been a respectable score.
But McIlroy, who said there was no strategy needed off the tee this week was made to rue those comments. Missed fairways on the 6th, 7th and 9th as well as a missed green on the par-3 8th cost him dearly while he also missed three par putts from inside 8-feet.
“I started missing fairways,” said the six-time major winner. “I missed the fairway right on 4, the fairway right on 6, the fairway right on 7, fairway right on 9. From there, it’s hard — you know, I didn’t have great angles either. Then obviously you start missing it just off the edges of these greens, it gets tricky.
“Yeah, I felt like I did okay. I made that birdie on 5 to get back to even-par after the soft bogey on 4, then I just got on that bogey train at the end.”
McIlroy defied a poor driving performance to lead by six at the halfway stage of the Masters last month and was second last in driving after four rounds as he defended the Green Jacket.
He got away with it then, but Aronimink treats the Grand Slam champion and the PGA Professional the same.
“I’m just not driving the ball well enough. It’s been a problem all year for the most part. Yeah, I’ve sort of got, like I miss it right, and then I want to try to correct it. And then I’ll overdo it, and I’ll miss it left. It’s a little bit of back and forth that way. So that’s pretty frustrating, especially when like I pride myself on driving the ball well.
“I just need to try to figure it out. I honestly thought I’d figured it out. Coming in here, I hit it well on Sunday at Quail Hollow, and then hit it good at home on Monday. Then even — obviously I had to curtail the practice round Tuesday, but hit it decent yesterday.
“Just sort of, once I get under the gun, it just seems like it starts to go a little bit wayward on me.”
McIlroy’s PGA Championship record since it moved to the May slot in 2019 is mixed with a best finish of T7 and he suffered driver woes last year after the big stick failed a conformity test en route to a T47 finish.
“I’d say similar sense of frustration. I’m just, yeah, not driving the ball well enough to give myself enough scoring opportunities.”
Meanwhile, Harrington and McKibbin did little to brighten Irish hopes with four over rounds of 74 of their own while Shane Lowry is one-over early into his opening clip.
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