Rory McIlroy got off to an ideal start on day one of the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, as the world number two and reigning Race to Dubai champion birdied two of his first three holes and closed out his opening nine holes – the back nine on Wentworth’s West Course – with a hat-trick to move to -5 and to the top of the leaderboard.
But it was far from plain sailing for the reigning Masters champion, who found just two of seven fairways and had to rely on impressive wedge play and a hot putter to propel him to the front.
It was more of the same off the tee on the front side, but this time the mistakes proved costly. After being forced to chip out from the trees to the right of the third, he recorded his first bogey of the round, but recovered to birdie the next after a deft chip from over the back of the par-5.
A rare mistake with a short-iron in hand – and from the short grass – led to another bogey on the sixth, and after finding a nasty lie down the right side of the eighth, he took the aggressive approach to a green guarded front and left by water and turned it over to find the hazard.
He managed to limit the damage by getting up-and-down from 86 yards from the dropzone, but it was another shot gone and a closing par saw him post a three-under 69 that left him just outside the top 10 with the afternoon starters in the early stages of their rounds.
“Yeah, I started very strong,” McIlroy said afterwards. “Five-under through 10, and I started hitting a few loose shots on the way in. Loose drive on three, loose drive on four that I actually got away with, then another one on seven, but it started to get a little tricky there at the end.
“The wind was gusting, but I played well. I certainly saw some improvements on the greens compared to last week. So, yeah, it’s an encouraging start. I feel like I could have been a couple better at least, but, you know, I think it’s going to play pretty tricky this afternoon. So, 69 isn’t a bad score to start with.”
McIlroy’s Pro-Am round – a 12-under-par 60 in which he played a 10-hole stretch in 11-under with nine birdies and an eagle – garnered lots of attention, and though he’d have much preferred it to be in the actual tournament, and feels that shooting low scores like that can only be good for the confidence.
“I wish it was on a Thursday and not on a Wednesday,” he laughed. “But yeah, look, I played well.
“Again, I think any time you play like that, whether it’s in practice or a competitive round, you have to take some confidence from it. I saw some putts going in. I felt better with the putter than I did last week. I brought that feeling for the most part into today and I’m a bit disappointed with the way I finished. But still a good score to build on and some very good signs in the game.”
McIlroy has been working hard on the range over the past few weeks, making technical tweaks in order to get his swing back in the place he wants it to be, but he still feels that he’s got some distance to go before he’s back to playing and feeling his best on a regular basis.
“I think it’s going to take a long time to get back to where I want to be,” he explained. “It feels – I certainly have a playable feeling on the course. It definitely still looks better on the range than what I get out there on the course.
“Over time, if I keep to what I’m doing, you know, it will hopefully start to bed in and it will start to feel and look similar on the course than it does on the range.
“But these things take time. If it’s taking me five or six months to get into this bad habit, it’s probably going to take me, I’d say, a similar time to get back out of it. I’m giving myself time. There’s plenty of time until I ramp up for the Masters again next year. But obviously in the meantime, there’s a lot of golf to play and some stuff to win, and hopefully I can still give myself a chance at that as wall.”
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