Rory rues what might have been
That horrendous round of 80 was sandwiched between the major championship record-equalling 63 on Thursday and fine scores of 69 and 68 over the weekend. McIlroy eventually finished in a share of third place with Henrik Stenson and Paul Casey behind Oosthuizen and Lee Westwood.
Remarkably, Oosthuizen, Westwood and McIlroy are all members of Chubby Chandler’s International Sports Management (ISM) so it was little surprise Chandler wore the biggest smile of all at St Andrews last night.
While third in the Open at the age of 21 has to be seen as a magnificent achievement and will jump him to seventh in the world rankings released today, it was also understandable McIlroy should have departed the Home of Golf lamenting what might have been.
His golf on the opening day was majestic. On Friday he allowed the gales to get the better of him and then silenced those who claimed he didn’t have the bottle for the battle by the manner in which he performed over the weekend.
“I just couldn’t help thinking about Friday going up the last hole,” he said. “If I had just sort of stuck in a little bit more then, and held it together more, it could have been a different story. But the other three rounds, I played very, very solidly. After the 80, I felt as if I came back well by shooting seven under at the weekend. The game is there and I can take a lot of positives out of this week.”
Remarkably, McIlroy has now played 12 competitive rounds over the Old Course and has yet to score in the 70s. Eleven in the 60s and that ugly 80 have maintained the trend but not eased the pain at the back of his head that it should be even better.
“I knew I had a good chance coming in and it was nice to be there for a while,” he said.
“I’m not suggesting that I could have got to 17 under like Louis, but I could definitely have been contending for second place. When you start off shooting 63 in any tournament, you fancy your chances going into the next three days. It just so happened that it got very windy on Friday and I didn’t deal with it very well.
“It’s always satisfying to be up there in a major. But could I have handled Friday a little better? I don’t know. Maybe if I had a day leading up to the event that was as windy as that and actually went out and practised in it, I probably could have handled it better. But I hadn’t played in wind like that for a long time so it was a bit of a new experience.”
McIlroy dismissed suggestions it was all part of the learning curve, claiming “major championships and big tournaments aren’t won on days like that. They’re won on days when you can score and you can make birdies”. However, that’s only partly true, given that you most certainly can lose them on days like Friday, and McIlroy did.
“For three rounds, I was 16 under par so it’s in there,” he went on. “I love this place and knew I had a great record here, It’s my favourite golf course in the world and it’s just a pity about Friday. But it’s not going to give me nightmares. I’m sure I’ll wake up in the morning and look at the fact that I was 16 under for three rounds at St Andrews in the Open and just had a bad round.”
Young Rory certainly knows how to woo and wow a gallery. Yesterday afternoon, he unleashed an amazing drive off the 18th tee that followed the perfect trajectory before taking the required right-to-left bounce that brought it to rest 12 feet right of the flag.
“It was great and it would have been nice to cap it off with the putt,” he said. “I actually hit a good putt. I read it straight and it went left at the end. The support this week was great and I appreciate it.”
McIlroy knows the new Open champion quite well, being members of the same management group and claimed he wasn’t unduly surprised at what Oosthuizen had done.
“He played with me in the last round when I won in Dubai last year and he contended very much then,” he recalled.
“We’ve all known Louis was a great player for a long time, hits it great and technically is very sound. He does everything well. I think he needed that win earlier in the year on the European Tour (the Andalucian Masters) to give him that little bit of confidence to challenge for the biggest events. Louis and his wife, Nel-Mare, have had a new baby, Jana, this year, so he’s in a pretty good place at the minute. He’s one of the nicest guys out there, he genuinely is.”
Given that countless young players were confidently predicted to win many majors in their younger days and failed to do so — Sergio Garcia being the classic example — there can be no guarantee that Rory McIlroy will be joining his stablemate in the major league sooner rather than later.
It might even happen this year as Whistling Straits, venue for next month’s US PGA, is, in McIlroy’s words “a linksy style of golf course”.
“Apart from the Lough Erne Challenge on Wednesday (McIlroy and Darren Clarke for Northern Ireland against Pádraig Harrington and Shane Lowry for the Republic), I’ll be taking this week off,” he said.
“I’ll chill out and then it’s the Irish Open, the Bridgestone in Akron and the PGA. It’s still a big summer of golf and there’s a lot to play for.”
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