The best laid plans and all of that. In the run-up to his opening round of the PGA Championship, Rory McIlroy had gone through his drills with all the precision of a Swiss clock. On the range, on the practice green; where his putting coach, Brad Faxon, stood and watched and nodded as putter and ball were a synchronised duo.
Then, when it mattered, it all went wrong. McIlroy’s opening drive of the championship – off the 10th – was wild, skirting down the waterway and then pushing further and further right so that the ball was a lost cause in the marshland and the most important part of the hole was for the player and his caddie Harry Diamond, with the aid of a USGA rules official, to figure out exactly where the ball had crossed the hazard line.
The instruction from the official was to “estimate” the crossing point and, in truth, the bogey five that McIlroy salvaged from potential disaster was a darn good effort.
However, it was the starting point of a round that skewed wildly with very little equilibrium, and it was with a rub of his hand across his brow when – some five and a half hours later – McIlroy’s final act was to pick the ball from the tin cup on the ninth, his 18th, and head on to the recorder’s to sign for an opening round 75, three-over-par.
It left him six shots adrift of clubhouse leaders Viktor Hovland, Brooks Koepka, Keegan Bradley and Aaron Wise who all signed for 69s.
McIlroy’s round featured six bogeys and three birdies, two of which had come in an immediate bounce back from that opening hole bogey rescue act. Just a fortnight on from his latest win in the Wells Fargo, and with the mantle of favouritism, that reaction – with birdies on the 11th and 12th – indicated that his early lapse had only served to kick him onwards.
It didn’t turn out that way, though.
McIlroy was forced to grind and his travails were numerous in a first round where he did well to stay somewhat on track. A water ball with his very first drive on the 10th. An embedded ball in sandy waste on the 16th.
“Can I get a ref?” he asked, hoping he would get some relief. He got the referee, but not what he wanted.
“Okay, no worries, thank you,” said McIlroy, as another bogey became reality.
And, on the first, “fore, left” came the shout as his homeward journey started with another bogey, one of four on that inward track with his only birdie arriving on the sixth – a 12-footer – before that light was quickly darkened by another bogey on the seventh after another poor drive.
McIlroy – winner of the 2012 PGA over the Ocean Course – had incurred self-inflicted damage in his quest this time around. Not what he wanted for sure, but, perhaps as he did in the Wells Fargo so recently, aware that a first round slip doesn’t mean all is a lost cause. The task ahead is, firstly, to survive the cut; and to take it from there.
