Can Rory straighten game?

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON insists the Irish Open is still his “fifth major” and Graeme McDowell stresses it is “on my golfing bucket list” but Rory McIlroy doesn’t seem quite so sure.

“I guess so,” he answered a little uncertainly when asked yesterday whether he shared the enthusiasm of his fellow major champions. His response seemed to sum up just where his mindset rests after a series of high profile mishaps on and off the golf course that have seen him plunge from the being the game’s number one player at the start of the year and one of the most popular and appealing sportsmen in the world to a stage where you must wonder what will be the next accident to befall the 24-year-old.

Interestingly, Conor Ridge and Colin Morrissey, directors of his former management company Horizon Sports, were prominent during McDowell’s press conference in the Carton House media centre yesterday but there was little sign of them when McIlroy made an appearance. This is just one of the off-course dilemmas Rory has to confront while he remains a little red faced after breaking the shaft of his nine iron in a fit of frustration during the US Open.