MAMARONECK, NEW YORK | If every journey begins with a step, Rory McIlroy’s encouraging first round in the U.S. Open at benevolent Winged Foot on Thursday was something like a hop, a skip and a jump.
On the scoreboard, McIlroy’s opening 3-under 67 put him near the top of a competition that didn’t look as much like a demolition derby as most expected, but it was only one soft day. With temperatures now set to turn chilly and the wind forecasted to blow enough to be bothersome, there was a sense Thursday that Winged Foot was merely clearing its throat.
For McIlroy – playing a good round that was two three-putt greens from being a special round – putting himself in position rather than out of position after the first round of a major championship was something of a plot twist.
Now six years beyond the most recent of his four major championship victories, the narrative surrounding McIlroy has morphed from how many majors he might win into why he hasn’t played better in majors.
That’s why his clean-looking 67 looked and felt like a window being opened to let fresh air into a stuffy room.
“At a U.S. Open, if you can get off to a good start, you’re not chasing as much. And when you chase on U.S. Open golf courses, that’s when you can start to make mistakes and compound your errors,” McIlroy said.
“To have that sort of cushion, to be a little bit more relaxed about your play, not take on too much, be able to still play conservative golf, I think that’s important here.”
Because golf is a numbers game, consider these:
In his previous eight major championship starts, McIlroy had been a combined 16-over par in the first round. That includes an opening-round 68 at Pebble Beach last June.
In those same events, he’s played the last three rounds a combined 23-under par.
In his past five U.S. Open starts, McIlroy has opened with 68, 80, 78, 77 and 72, which averages out to 75 and helps explain why he missed three consecutive U.S. Open cuts before his T9 last year.
“I think (fatherhood) just puts things in perspective a little bit. (Golf) matters to me and I care about it very much, but at the same time, it makes the hard days a little easier to get over, right.” – Rory McIlroy
For a guy who was ranked No. 1 in the world in June, McIlroy has been pushed at times to explain himself, most recently for why his play since the PGA Tour restarted has been flat. He has just one top-10 finish – a T8 in the 30-player field at the Tour Championship – in his past nine starts.
Some of it has to do with McIlroy becoming a father for the first time last month, an understandable tug on his heart and mind. Some of it has been the nature of the game, which comes and goes for even the best players.
And some of it, well, that’s the tricky part. For a guy who once declared golf was the most important thing in his life and now finds himself in a different stage of life at age 31, priorities get adjusted. Golf is still what McIlroy does but it doesn’t define him the way it once did.
“I think (fatherhood) just puts things in perspective a little bit,” McIlroy said. “(Golf) matters to me and I care about it very much, but at the same time, it makes the hard days a little easier to get over, right. And I’m not saying that I want to have hard days to get over, but yeah, you’re a little more relaxed.
“When I say it’s not the be-all and end-all, it’s a major championship and I’ve grown up my whole life dreaming of winning these tournaments, and that’s not going to change, but if it doesn’t quite happen, I can live with that and go home and be very happy and leave what’s happened at the golf course at the golf course.”
Playing under gray skies with Adam Scott and Justin Rose in relative solitude Thursday, McIlroy put together a seemingly stress-free first round. While Rose looks at times like a man who has lost the keys to his golf swing, McIlroy minimized his mistakes while hitting a handful of shots that could be framed and hung on the walls of Winged Foot’s stately clubhouse.
At the 243-yard, slightly uphill par-3 third (his 12th), McIlroy painted a 4-iron against the backdrop of a sprawling white house behind the green recently purchased by basketball coach Rick Pitino, fitting the baby draw between two bunkers to within 7 feet of a pin cut in a portion of a putting surface that could barely hold a full-sized sofa. It set up the third of his three deuces in the first round.
Not long after, McIlroy scalded a 327-yard driver onto the par-4 sixth green, landing his tee shot in a gap the size of a two-car garage. He three-putted for par (he also three-putted No. 1 for bogey after a poor wedge shot that irked McIlroy) but he walked away feeling emboldened by his ballstriking.
As good as the tee shots at Nos. 3 and 6 were, McIlroy was most pleased with his second shot into the par-4 16th, a 196-yard approach that finished about 20 feet from the hole. Only McIlroy knew how good it was.
“It’s the shot that I’ve been struggling with a little bit, where the wind was off the right and I had to start it right of the green, and I’ve been sort of hanging them out there a little bit and not committing to letting it turn back, and that was a really good shot,” McIlroy said.
“But it went to 20 feet; people would just see it as a normal shot, but it was a nice little win for me because that was a shot I’ve been struggling with recently.”
Little wins, like shooting 67 on Thursday, are what U.S. Open victories are built upon.
One round at a time.