Rory McIlroy will be testing plenty of drivers over the weekend ahead of next week’s US Open at Oakmont after he missed the cut by a country mile at the RBC Canadian Open which has left him concerned ahead of the third major of the year.
McIlroy broke 59, after thirteen holes of his second round, on his way to a calamitous 78 for a share of 149th place on nine-over-par as he missed the cut by twelve shots, the worst result of his PGA Tour career.
The Holywood man has been sluggish since winning the career grand slam at the Masters and was also hit with a double whammy at the PGA Championship last month when his driver failed a conformity test and he struggled that week and looks to be getting worse if anything as he ranked 139th in strokes gained off the tee.
“Yeah, of course it concerns me. You don’t want to shoot high scores like the one I did today. Still I felt like I came here obviously with a new driver thinking that that sort of was going to be good and solve some of the problems off the tee, but it didn’t,” said McIlroy who was eight over for his opening eleven holes following a quadruple, double and two bogeys before dropped shots at 13 and 17 were cancelled out by birdies on 15 and 18.
“Obviously going to Oakmont next week, what you need to do more than anything else there is hit fairways. Still sort of searching for the sort of missing piece off the tee.
“Obviously for me, when I get that part of the game clicking, then everything falls into place for me. Right now that isn’t. Yeah, that’s a concern going into next week.”
Ahead of next week’s US Open at Oakmont, McIlroy will have to do some soul searching. Earlier in the week he admitted he was struggling to get in the zone that he was in for the last eleven years as he chased an elusive fifth major. Alarm bells should be ringing now as he looks for solutions.
“I think there’s still learnings that you have to take from a day like today. Look, even though the last two days didn’t go the way I wanted them to, there’s still things that I can take from it, and there’s still things that I can learn.
“Yeah, I’m going to have to do a lot of practice and a lot of work over the weekend at home and try to at least have a better idea of where my game is going into next week.”
McIlroy was bagging a 44-inch driver, an experiment which failed earlier in the season and a huge part of McIlrory’s recovery mission over the weekend will be to find a driver that suits his game ahead of what looks to be a brutal US Open test.
“I went back to a 44-inch driver this week to try to get something that was a little more in control and could try to get something a bit more in play. But if I’m going to miss fairways, I’d rather have the ball speed and miss the fairway than not.
“I was saying to Harry going down the last this is the second time this year I’ve tried the new version, and it hasn’t quite worked out for me. So I’d say I’ll be testing quite a few drivers over the weekend.”
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