Rory McIlroy’s second round at the Irish Open ended with a long, dumbfounded stare at his caddie Harry Diamond. McIlroy had stitched his approach to less than five feet from the final flag before proceeding to three-putt for bogey in a manner that left him befuddled.
That dropped shot meant he carded a second-straight round of 69, leaving him nine shots adrift of Shane Lowry, his title defence teetering on the brink of slithering into the sea.
McIlroy hit the ball so beautifully at times that his long game has grounds to sue his putter for defamation. He played well enough to catapult himself firmly into contention across the weekend, but instead he missed eight putts inside 12 feet. He will need to make an early sprint through inclement conditions on Saturday if he is to force his way into the mix on Sunday.
McIlroy’s problem came from the fact that Donald Trump’s greens at Doonbeg share the US president’s trait of deception. He insisted he hit his putts well, but simply couldn’t read the greens.
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“It’s a reading issue for sure,” said McIlroy. “I am starting them on my lines, so that’s not an issue.”
Worse than not being able to read the greens was knowing he couldn’t read the greens, which led him to standing over putts he couldn’t trust.
“When you get over the ball, you’re trying to trust what you are seeing, but everything else you have seen hasn’t gone the way you thought, so it’s hard to put a committed stroke on it,” he said. “What I am seeing when I am reading them and what is happening when I hit the putter are two different things.”
The conditions were benign in comparison to Thursday’s howling winds, and McIlroy opened by missing a birdie putt from 12 feet on the first hole. He sank a long putt from off the green to birdie the second, but missed a series of chances from there, failing to get up and down for birdie from a greenside bunker on the par-five fourth.
The divergent parts of his game were exhibited on holes seven and eight. First he missed from three feet to drop a shot on seven before he swished a gorgeous three-wood from 268 yards for a kick-in eagle from three feet on the par-five eighth. It was redolent of the shot to the 16th green that secured him his first Irish Open title at the K Club in 2016. “Shot of the day for sure,” he mused.
But his struggles on the greens left him without an ignition key to jump-start some momentum. He missed from eight feet on nine and could only make par on the par-five 10th from the middle of the fairway. There was a measure of mitigation here, however, as a click of a camera phone at the top of his backswing led him to wipe the approach right into thickets of rough. The normally placid Harry Diamond barked in annoyance at the amateur photographer.
A seven-foot miss on 11 led to another dropped shot, and he parred his way to 17, where he finally gave the rivers of fans following his every move something to shout about. Having gone right off the tee and into a shaggy patch of rough, he left himself fully 40 feet for birdie, which he duly drained.
“The only reason I holed that is because I saw what Brooks’ [Koepka] did before me,” he said. “If I get a few more putts like that, where someone can show me the line, that would be good.”
This is not the first time McIlroy has struggled on links greens of late – his challenge at this year’s Open was undermined as he found a few too many of the greens at Royal Birkdale unintelligible.
The skies above Doonbeg are expected to darken on Saturday and the wind will start whipping once again. McIlroy hopes the difficult conditions will accentuate his tee-to-green game.
“That should put a premium on ball striking, so if I can see a couple [putts] go in then hopefully it’s a different story,” he said.
This is McIlroy’s 541st event as a professional across the DP World and PGA Tours. It is a measure of the sport’s maddening appeal that it can still leave him looking mystified after all these years.
