A mixed opening round for McIlroy as he focuses on golf after recent disruptions

JUST PLAYING GOLF: Rory McIlroy is happy to be playing golf and leaving the disruptions of the last few days to the side for a few hours. Pic: Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images

Having tried to fix golf only to discover that the fix was in all along, Rory McIlroy turned his Thursday thoughts to more familiar problems. Eventually, he looked pretty glad to do so.

They are, crucially, issues that he knows he is in total control of and knows he can fix: erratic driving, tentative chipping, stubbornly frustrating wedge play. All controllable, all him.

After 48 hours in which the sport that is his life was turned upside down when Saudi Arabia assumed almost total control, McIlroy got back to playing it shortly after sunrise at Oakdale Golf and Country Club in Toronto’s northern fringes.

He started his defence of the RBC Canadian Open with a birdie and ended his opening round with one too but in between times experienced all sorts of ups and downs, at times looking comforted to just be out there on the fairway, at other moments looking thoroughly pissed off with it all. But the ups and downs, the push and pull of it all was his own doing, not Jay Monahan’s, Yasir Al-Rumayyan’s nor Greg Norman’s. All him.

After five hours of it, he took a step back, looked at his one-under-par 71 and saw plenty of positives. If this was the beginning of the next phase of his golfing life, it wasn’t a bad beginning, even if he and playing partner Justin Rose had to make a conscious decision of focusing only on the game and none of its noise.

“It was good. Rosie and I said 'all right, no chatting until lunch so that we can actually concentrate on what we're doing out there',” McIlroy told reporters as he sat in a tie for 30th but just four back from the early leaders. 

“We started to get in a conversation walking down the first and we're like, 'No, let's stop this. Let's just focus on our golf and we'll say what we want to say when we get inside'. So it was nice to play a round of golf and focus on something else for those five hours we were out there.” 

Of the nine questions he fielded after his round, seven centred on Tuesday’s bombshell agreement between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the PIF. One was about the course set-up and another about the air quality in Canada’s most populous city as the country deals with raging wildfires that are cloaking the Great White North in smoke.

McIlroy said he found Thursday’s air easier to breathe in than Tuesday’s, even though measuring devices suggested Thursday’s was in fact more treacherous to people’s health. Perhaps the unique and localised Saudi-Monahan pressure system on Tuesday had added to McIlroy’s short breathing then. The following day hadn’t been much easier either. Asked whether he felt more personal pressure on or off the course right now, McIlroy barely inhaled.

“Off!” he replied in an instant. "You know, the most uncomfortable I've felt in the last 12 months was my press conference yesterday.

“I got a good night's sleep last night. So it was nice to recharge the batteries. I would say my energy levels on Tuesday and Wednesday were diminishing quite quickly. But I slept well last night and felt good out there. I'll do a little bit of practice this afternoon. Then I'll get another good night's sleep tonight and I'll be fine.” 

First there was that lunch and chat with Rose. The Saudis and their billions were almost certain to dominate the conversation between the long-time Ryder Cup teammates and friends. McIlroy was asked whether he had any connection or dealings with Al-Rumayyan, the all-powerful head of the PIF. It shouldn’t be a surprise that he had plenty.

They’d played a Pro-Am together in Dubai a few years ago and had bumped into one another at a US Grand Prix race in Texas too, F1 being one of many sporting corners where Saudi influence was carved out and then expanded significantly and rapidly.

“Obviously being in and around the golf world and wider sports world, he sort of runs in the same circles as a lot of people that I know,” said McIlroy. “He's an avid golfer. I think he really does like the game of golf. He's a very impressive man. Harvard Business School. Runs 7 or 800 billions of dollars and invested in a ton of different companies. He's a very smart man.” 

He’s also a problem for another day so that was as far as McIlroy went. In terms of his own issues, the driver looked to be troubling the 34-year-old the most in Thursday’s opening round. Twice in the space of three holes around the turn he angrily struck out at tee blocks after drives found thick rough.

It was a scrambly, scraggly sort of round and there have been a lot of them in 2023. But the good moments were very good. Having started on the 10th, he made some stellar putts, carding three birdies before the turn and another two after, finishing with a brilliant two at the short ninth hole. On a tricky track, there was nothing wrong with the 71. Compatriot Shane Lowry’s early struggles — two over through eight — confirmed as much.

There’s a title that clearly means a lot to McIlroy to be defended here this week and a US Open to be contested in California next week. After 48 chaotic hours and well over a year of fighting those fights, McIlroy is ready to look out for himself for a while.

“This is business and my job is playing golf at the end of the day,” he said. “So the more that I can focus on that and focus on the birdies and the bogeys instead of the stuff that's happened in the board room I'll be much happier.”