Rory’s meeting of minds with Nicklaus

Rory McIlroy has set himself the challenge of winning two of the remaining three majors this year and will today start his bid for a second US Open title determined to avoid a nightmare Friday the 13th.

Great starts on a Thursday have not been a problem for the world number six, who will tee off at 12:40pm Irish time today in confident mood alongside fellow Irishman Graeme McDowell and American Webb Simpson in a group of former US Open champions.

The 2011 US Open champion has every reason to feel good about his game having recorded nine top-10 finishes in 12 starts this year, including last month’s victory in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.

Yet McIlroy is conscious of the need to avoid runs of bad holes that can undo strong starts to tournaments and ruin his chances of victory, most of them occurring in the second round, such as the 77 he shot on Friday at this year’s Masters, derailing his effort to win a green jacket after an opening 71. It has even prompted the two-time major winner to seek advice from Jack Nicklaus.

“I think I’m first in scoring average on the PGA Tour on day one (67.63). And I’m like 181st on the second day. It’s so strange,” said McIlroy, who is actually ranked 192nd for round two scoring average (73.5). “I’d rather be 70th in each.

“It just happened to be Fridays. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve got off to such good starts in tournaments where I may be thinking too much about my score, and I’m up near the leaderboard and I might be trying to push too much and keep it going.

“I spent two hours with Jack Nicklaus last week in his office in Palm Beach and had a great conversation about everything, business, golf, brand, the whole lot. And I got a lot from that. And he said to me “how the hell can you shoot 63 and then 78?” I said: “I wasn’t meaning to, Jack. I’m trying not to”.

“He said to me he was never afraid to change things up in the middle of a round if it wasn’t going well, he felt like he wasn’t swinging well. He’d make a swing change right then and there. The mental strength to be able to do that and trust what you’re doing.”

McIlroy, whose second major came in the 2012 US PGA Championship at Kiawah Island, goes into this weekend at Pinehurst No.2 knowing he is in a very good position to win the first of two major wins he has targeted this year having drawn a blank in 2013.

“I think it’s definitely a reasonable goal. You have to go back to Pádraig Harrington in ’08 to have a multiple major champion in a single year. It doesn’t happen that often. “But I feel like my game is in a good enough place where I can definitely give myself a chance to do that. I’ve got three majors left this season and I do feel like my game is good enough to be able to contend in all of them.

“With the way I’ve been playing and how I feel my game is, I’m one of the favourites coming in here. There’s a lot of guys that are playing really good golf at the minute, Adam Scott, Bubba Watson. I think this golf course sets up really well for someone like Jason Day, hits it long, hits it high, has a really sharp short game. There’s a lot of guys coming in here feeling like they have a great chance to win. I put myself in that category and, hopefully, I live up to that and I can give myself a chance coming down the stretch on Sunday.”

The Irishman is aware mental strength is a pre-requisite to winning a US Open, the self-styled toughest challenge in golf, particularly on a course that demands a well-thought out gameplan hitting into crowned greens, no rough and treacherous run-off areas.

“In the 72 holes I’m hopefully going to play here, I might go at five pins, if they’re pins that are accessible, pins that you feel confident that you can get to.

“With the way these greens are, the green complexes, anything in the middle of the green is a really good shot. And you’ve more chance of making your par, making a two-putt from there, than if you go off the side of these greens and the worse thing you want to do is go long on these greens.

“If you’re going to miss, you miss short. The greens are firm, you’re playing for the ball to pitch eight or 10 feet on each green, basically.

“It’s going to be a test of patience. And I think I am better equipped than I was a few years ago. The US Open I won was... abnormal. It was wet. It was low scoring. I haven’t won a tournament whenever it’s been like this. That’s why I’m relishing the challenge.

“It’s conditions that I haven’t won in before and I’d love to be able to prove to myself, and prove to other people that I can win in different conditions. It’s a great opportunity to do that this week.”