“Fax, f**k off will ya? Seriously, I need you to start confusing him,” joked Shane Lowry towards Brad Faxon, Rory McIlroy’s putting coach, when the world number two rolled in a 20-footer during a Tuesday afternoon practice round at Royal Birkdale. The implication was that money was on the line and McIlroy’s hot putter was burning a hole in Lowry’s pocket.
Fast forward 48 hours, and McIlroy was walking off the eighth green in round one, shaking his head in befuddlement having just missed a three-and-a-half-footer, and sat at two-over-par.
He’d officially hit six of those eight greens in regulation and taken 15 official putts. In reality, it was more like seven of the eight greens and 16 putts since he was on the fringe and just 20 feet away on the third, so his lag to 11 inches counts as a short game shot rather than a putt, but either way, it appeared that Brad Faxon – or his influence at least – had indeed f**ked off.
A few minutes later, he teed his ball up on the ninth and aimed right, way right, and unleashed a ferocious 390-yard drive that ended up pin high on the dance floor on the par-4 ninth. A two-putt from 60 feet got him his first birdie of the round, but he still finished his front nine losing 2.5 strokes to the field on the greens and ranked 146th of the 156 in the field in putting.
And it only got worse as he three-putted from the fringe on 10, missing a four-footer back up the hill for par and coming too close for comfort to lipping out the three-footer for bogey, then took an early walk after a nine-footer on the next that never looked like dropping.
The adage ‘drive for show, putt for dough’ isn’t quite the truism it once was as modern technology and increased fitness regimes mean that the ability to launch drives over 320 yards often takes precedence, but not at a major championship and especially not at a fast-running Open Championship course where you’re going to be tested with three-, four-, five- and six-footers all week long.
But golf is a fickle game, and one of fine margins.
Making a five-footer for par to avoid falling to +4 – like he did on 12 – wouldn’t typically be the catalyst to turn your flatstick fortunes around, but he followed up by draining a 24-footer on the next, found the centre of the cup from 12 feet on 15, and closed out with another five-footer on the last, all for birdie.
But golf is a fickle game and one of fine margins. No, that’s not an accidental repeat, it’s just something that’s worth reiterating because just when it looked as though he was becoming more likely than not to convert his birdie chances, he conspired to bogey both of the par-5s on the way home, taking four shots to reach the putting surface on each of them thanks to scrappy long game and heavy-handed short-game shots.
Yet somehow, despite all of this, he’s by no means out of the tournament at +2 and tied for 85th. Jackson Suber may have the lead at -5, but few would expect him or Sungjae Im or Dan Brown (both -4) to be top of the leaderboard after 54 holes, so the -3 number that Cameron Young, Bryson DeChambeau and Robert MacIntyre are on is where McIlroy will likely consider the real tournament leader to be.
And a five-shot deficit sounds a lot better than seven.
There’s no doubt that the early starters on day one had the easier conditions. Okay, so the ball wasn’t travelling as far at 7:30am as it was at 5pm, but that early-morning dew and softer breeze weakened Royal Birkdale’s defences and we’re expecting a similar scenario on Friday with McIlroy on the tee just after 10am.
He thinks he’s more than capable of making up some of that lost ground in the early stages of round two, and he’s won a major before from seven back after round one.
But he’s going to have to putt a lot better than he did today. If Brad Faxon took Shane Lowry’s tongue-in-cheek advice literally, it’s time to get himself back to Royal Birkdale and back in McIlroy’s corner.
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