Rory is brave as a lion – but rash too

REGRETS? Rory McIlroy has a couple but before he takes some enforced rest from the game to heal his injured wrist, he still has designs on a second Major title this weekend at the PGA Championship.

The US Open champion was last night expecting to make the halfway cut at Atlanta Athletic Club with one or two strokes to spare after a three-over-par second round 73 sent him to three over for the tournament.

McIlroy, though, could have already been on a plane home following his rash decision to blast his way out of trouble during his opening round on Thursday.

McIlroy had strained a tendon in his right wrist when he took on a risky shot at the third hole with his ball in the left rough and in front of a thick tree root. The 22-year-old could have played out sideways onto the fairway but instead took aim for the green and paid the price, jarring his right wrist as his club made contact with the root.

McIlroy continued his round, receiving treatment, icing the wrist repeatedly and getting it strapped from the ninth tee and somehow managed to shoot a level-par 70 before heading off to the hospital for an MRI scan that diagnosed the problem. And having woken up feeling good to go, he appeared at the practice range early yesterday with new strapping on the wrist, covering less of an area than the hand to elbow emergency bandaging of the first round and proceeded to shoot a three-birdie, three-bogey, one triple bogey 73.

The triple was a six at the par-three 17th when he found water off the elevated tee about a yard short of the green and three-putted for the second time on his opening nine.

McIlroy said his injured wrist was “uncomfortable but not very painful, just a niggle” but of his day’s round he added: “To be honest, I hit it okay. I just didn’t putt very well. Finding it very hard to read the greens and even with a broken wrist I should be putting better than this.

“I might do a bit of work on the putting green this afternoon and try to get that sharpened up.

“I feel as if you play well out there, there’s a good number you can shoot and if I can go out there tomorrow and get myself back into red figures, try to give myself a chance going into Sunday.

“I feel as if I can still make birdies out there. If I didn’t think I could contend, I probably wouldn’t be playing, so I feel as if there’s a decent one out there tomorrow, a 66 or a 65, get myself back into red numbers and maybe shoot something similar on Sunday and see where that leaves me.”

Regardless of his weekend play, the physiotherapist who was first on the scene with medical assistance on Thursday, Cornell Driessen, said the injured wrist could need up to eight weeks to heal.

“This type of injury needs rest, compression, elevation and ice to reduce the swelling,” the South African Driessen said. “He will strain it again because he’s continuing to play but it’s a calculated risk he’s taking. So it might take anything up from two weeks to six to eight weeks.”

Driessen added that if there was any possibility of McIlroy causing long-term damage by playing on he would have been advised to stop playing.

“He’s young and it also helps that he’s been fit and if he wasn’t that strong the injury may have been worse. He’s really strong.

“He’s taking anti-inflammatories with a prescription by a doctor. These guys are very good. If he was in danger of hurting himself for the rest of his career they wouldn’t have let him play.

“He’s very brave.”

And a little rash. McIlroy conceded he had made an error of judgement in not laying up at the third on Thursday.

“It probably wasn’t the right decision. Looking back on it, you know, hindsight is a great thing. It was a mistake in judgement. I thought I would be able to get away with it, let go of the club at impact, and hopefully it would be okay. But it’s hard to let go at the right moment; the club is coming down so fast. Just let go a little bit too late and jarred the rest with the tree root.”

The aftermath of that decision continued into the second round, although McIlroy admitted it had been more psychological than physical.

“It’s probably tougher mentally more than anything else just to get it out of your head, sort of trying to protect it through the shot and it’s frustrating because sometimes you feel as if you try to play a shot and just come out of it. It was a frustrating day to say the least.”