There was no opening day disaster on home turf for Rory McIlroy as three birdies in a row to finish catapulted him into early contention at the Amgen Irish Open.
The Holywood man carded an opening round of 80 the last time he teed it up at Royal County Down and he was a refreshing twelve shots better this time around as he put the hoodoos of 2015 and Portrush in 2019 behind him.
“It was nice, I felt like I controlled my ball flight well. I’ve been working a little bit on my swing these last couple of weeks. Yeah, it felt a little better.” said McIlroy who moved from 30th to 4th in the blink of an eye and is just two shots behind Todd Clements on three-under-par.
“I’ve probably struggled a lot in left-to-right winds this year, so to sort of control my ball flight a bit and test it out there today was good to see that, you know, I was able to do it when I needed to.”
McIlroy has a wretched record up north with three missed cuts in four appearances while his Irish Open record either side of his 2016 victory is poor with three consecutive missed cuts before his win and no top-10s since his win.
McIlroy has described playing home events like a double edged sword but home comforts an hour up the road in Holywood have allowed him to detach himself from the tournament away from the golf course.
“I think it’s felt different staying at home. I feel a bit detached from the golf tournament. Today I woke up and usually when you’re at a tournament site, like you can get if I was staying at the Slieve Donard there, you can hear people announced on the first tee, and maybe the first thing you do is checking your phone and seeing how the boys started off and checking the leaderboard.
“Staying an hour away, I’ve felt detached from the tournament this week, which has been quite a nice thing and haven’t been so wrapped up in it, which is quite nice. Probably the reason why I started well, I would say.”
Teeing off with the weight of expectation on his shoulders, McIlroy made the ideal start with a birdie on the par-5 1st. He bogeyed the 5th and birdied the 8th before a birdie on the par-5 12th left him within touch of the early leaders.
McIlroy’s round threatened to go off the rails with a three-putt bogey on 14 and another dropped shot on 15 but a clutch up and down for birdie on the drivable par-4 16th paved the way for birdies on 17 and 18 as he produced a grandstand finish that the people of this parish have longed for.
“Yeah, it was nice to get that ball up-and-down on 16 , and I think as well, you know, you chip it to four feet and you’re waiting to hit your putt for five or six minutes. It starts to, you can start to think about it too much, and to hole that putt was nice.
“I made four great swings on the last two holes that both 17 and 18, and the two second shots. So yeah, it was nice to finish like that.”
McIlroy’s last foray on a treacherously tough links course ended in disaster at Royal Troon in July, but he was delighted to at least right some of the wrongs from that week on another golf course he considers to be of major championship standard.
“I mean, yeah, in terms of like difficulty of the golf course, yeah. Saying that, I found Troon very difficult. More difficult than this!
“It’s a major championship-calibre golf course. It’s just unfortunate that we don’t have the infrastructure around the golf course to host something like an Open because if we did, it definitely would be able to host an Open Championship. It’s just limited the amount of people you can get in here and logistically it doesn’t quite make sense.
“But it’s up there with the toughest courses that we play.”
McIlroy is the leading Irishman and the only Irishman of the eleven to end the day under par.
But there are plenty of Irish who are well placed with the remarkable performance of 17-year-old Roganstown amateur Seán Keeling a highlight as he went around with 17 pars and a birdie on 18 while 2009 winner as an amateur Shane Lowry is a shot further back on one-over alongside Conor Purcell and Royal Dublin amateur Max Kennedy.
2007 champion Pádraig Harrington and Newcastle local Simon Thornton are in decent positions on two-over while Waterford pair Seamus Power and Gary Hurley are plus three alongside Tom McKibbin.
Mark Power had Leona Maguire’s former caddie Dermot Byrne on the bag and he carded a four-over 75.
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