It was a sign that things were not going well for Rory McIlroy when another errant shot veered off target and struck his father on the back of his leg. Being forced to play what could be termed a chip off the old block was symptomatic of another wilting tilt at the career grand slam. The four-times major champion wore black and blue — and his father felt it by the end of McIlroy’s worst opening round at the Masters.
Gerry McIlroy took the incident on the 7th in good heart. “I should ask him for an autographed glove,” he suggested. The only positive for his son is that the chances of striking a family member in a major seem only marginally lower than him winning this one. “Maybe I’ll autograph a bag of frozen peas for him,” he said. “He didn’t limp away. He walked pretty swiftly, so that was OK.”
McIlroy was seven off the lead by the time he finished with a bleak six-bogey 76. That happened to be the record first-round deficit overhauled by a winner, but Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods always looked far more likely.
Out in 39, the world No 12 navigated Amen Corner like a non-believer. Having found the water on 11 and slumped to a bogey, he missed the green at Golden Bell and was back up Rae’s Creek without a paddle on 13. Another shot dropped, another sag of the shoulders. He was drifting.
If this opportunity was fading fast, McIlroy had all but predicted as much when he spoke this week about his new, more formal partnership with the coaching sage Pete Cowen. “I’m obviously focused on this week but it’s bigger than that,” McIlroy said, which is a curious, if honest, thing to say when trying to become only the sixth man to achieve the grand slam.
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Cowen is a down-to-earth Yorkshireman known for issuing one of golf’s great bollockings. It was aimed at Brooks Koepka for his “dog’s dead” attitude and the American duly won his first major at the 2017 US Open. “I’m not there to stroke his ego,” the black-clad guru once said. As McIlroy’s round sputtered and stalled, the anecdote resonated.
McIlroy has employed Cowen to work on his swing, but he has more holistic gifts and you sense he has as good a chance as anyone of getting to grips with one of sport’s most enduring enigmas. Cowen will not sugarcoat things for McIlroy. Indeed, last year he tore into Koepka again when he answered another SOS and flew to Florida. If the knee hurt, so did the truth. “He had been playing crap,” Cowen said.
This is McIlroy’s seventh attempt to complete the grand slam, but he came more in hope than expectation. “Honestly I’m quite encouraged with how I hit it on the way in,” he said. “I hung in there.”
Recently he spoke of having a two-way miss and yesterday reminded us that he at least got that right. Deep in the trees to the right on the 2nd, and in the pine straw on the right at the 3rd, he then pulled his tee shot towards the TV tower on the 6th and was left again before shouting “ball right” on the Gerry-bothering 7th. Given his putting was also mediocre it had to unravel. A birdie on the 8th arrested the self-flagellation, but a torrid three-putt on the 9th unveiled more scar tissue.
McIlroy seems to have accepted that his game is in transition so this was a long shot, but it was only last year that he was putting together a run of seven top-five finishes that took him to No 1 in the world by the time golf shut down in March. Lest we forget, he has also been in the top ten at Augusta in six of the past seven years. Contending, though, rather than papering over the cracks of the sloppy major round, has largely been beyond him since 2014.
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Cowen told The Times what was wrong with McIlroy last month after watching him fall out of the world’s top ten at Bay Hill, Florida. “He needs to control his ball flight a bit better with his irons and wedges,” he said. What we know about him is that he often gets better. In November he started with a 75. He was ten shots worse than Dustin Johnson after the opening day and then outscored the American over the last three rounds.
This, then, sounds like head stuff. When he plays himself almost out of contention the pressure evaporates, and he then bounces his unfettered path to a backdoor top five or ten. Cowen does not do psychobabble but he can declutter the mind of the mentally scrambled with his blunt wisdom. The message on the flag that Koepka sent him from the 2017 US Open showed that: “Thanks for the bollocking.” Last night’s debrief will have been interesting.
