Rory McIlroy faces an uphill battle to win his seventh major and second Claret Jug as putting woes saw him get off to a false start on day one of the Open.
Teeing off at 3.15pm, McIlroy emerged to bumpy greens at a sun kissed Royal Birkdale and he missed three putts from inside four feet during his round and ended the five and a half hour day 104th in the putting statistics.
McIlroy, who birdied the last for a two-over 72, has come from seven shots back to win a major before and will have to chase down Jackson Suber over the weekend. Although the last 26 Open winners have been within five shots of the lead after round one.
The 2014 Open champion bogeyed the par threes 4th and 7th to fall two-over early on as short missed plagued him. A birdie on the 415 yard par-4 9th after he drove the green in the burnt conditions looked to have him back on track. But another short miss on 10 cost him a bogey and he compounded that with another dropped shot on 11.
McIlroy was uncharacteristically erratic on the par fives, dropping shots on both as he birdied 13, 15 and 18 in a rollercoaster finish.
“I’ll start with the positives. I drove the ball incredibly well. I took the golf course on off the tee. Obviously with the positions that I put myself in off the tee, I feel like I obviously should have shot a better score. Played the hard holes well. Birdied 13, 15 and 18 on the back.
“The two bogeys on the par-5s wasn’t great and I struggled the first two holes to get the speed of the greens. I felt like they were very inconsistent, just because some parts of the greens are still alive and growing and other parts have went really dead. It’s like, you’ve got this — sort of reminds me a bit of Pebble Beach when Pebble Beach gets like that for a U.S. Open. It’s just hard to judge the speed sometimes.
“Struggled with that early on. Sort of felt like I got it going a little bit, but yeah, just too many stupid mistakes. But every time I made a stupid mistake, thankfully I made a birdie to sort of keep myself in it.”
The Holywood man is hopeful that he can emerge tomorrow morning to smoother greens and calmer conditions.
“Not too far away. Hopefully we’ll get the better conditions tomorrow and maybe the greens are a little bit smoother in the morning. Go out there and shoot a good one and get myself right back in it for the weekend.
“If you look at the discrepancy between the scoring this morning and the scoring this afternoon, it looks like that’s going to be flipped tomorrow with the conditions again. Hopefully I can take advantage of the more benign conditions in the morning and shoot one under par and get back in it.”
Meanwhile, Shane Lowry leads the Irish charge after he birdied two of his last three holes to salvage a one-under 69 to lie four off Suber’s early lead.
But overall, it has been a testing day for Ireland’s struggling seven with Tom McKibbin (+1), Darren Clarke (+3) and David Howard (+4) hoping the cutline doesn’t get too far ahead of them. Amateur champion Stuart Grehan (+7) found the going tough on the links while Padráig Harrington (+10) after an opening 80, sits bottom of the leaderboard.
Leave a comment