Rory McIlroy is sixteen-over-par for his last seven rounds and has only broken par once. Today he will feel he probably should have been level-par at the very worst but a horror back nine at Oakmont has left him with work to do at the 125th US Open.
All eyes were on McIlroy to see what version of him turned up and in truth, we saw a pre-Masters and post-Masters mix in an opening round of 74 that was a tale of two nines and leaves him eight shots behind JJ Spaun on four-over.
Teeing off on the back nine, McIlroy made a superb start. A birdie putt slipped by on the 10th but he looked in the mood when he rolled in a 28-footer for birdie on the 11th and took advantage of a mammoth 392-yard driver with another birdie on the par-5 12th.
He closed out his outward half in pars but things quickly unravelled on the front nine after dropping a shot on the first.
He made the mother and father of all bogeys on the par-5 4th. After finding the knee high hazard rough with his driver, McIlroy went hack, hack, hack, before hitting a 6-iron to 30-feet and sinking the putt for a 6.
The 2011 US Open winner failed to get up and down from the green side bunker on the par-3 6th and he followed that up with a three-putt bogey on 7.
Two-over was no disaster with just a handful of players in red figures at the time but another calamity came his way with a double bogey on the 276-yard par-3 8th to condemn him to an inward nine of 41.
Off the tee, it was decent from McIlroy who gained 1.68 strokes on the field to lie in sixth position in that category from the morning wave, despite hitting just half of his fairways.
Poor iron play was McIlroy’s let down, ranking 108th in the field in strokes gained approach and Paul McGinley lamented that fact when talking to Sky Sports Golf.
“Rory didn’t play that badly but his iron play let him down, he is down in the bottom 10% in iron play. You have to be good in iron play around here, the targets may be big in size but in reality they are small because if you miss it in the wrong spot you are going to pay the price.”
What seemed like an ideal all-European three-ball with McIlroy, Shane Lowry and Justin Rose turned into one of those groups where everyone drags each other down.
Rose, who has two runner-up finishes in his last three major starts, doubled the last for a 77 while a hole-out eagle on the third was the highlight for 2016 runner-up Lowry who carded three double bogeys on his way to a painful 79.
Other big names tumbled on day one with world number one Scottie Scheffler and defending champion Bryson DeChambeau back in the pack on three-over.
DeChambeau didn’t play that badly and despite a couple of herculean saves on the greens, he didn’t have his best stuff at all on the putting surfaces while Scheffler’s radar was off with his irons and on the eleven greens he did hit, it was not his day.
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