ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – Rory McIlroy called the 150th Open Championship at The Old Course the “fiddliest” Open he’s ever played and noted that “fiddly hasn’t really been my forte over the years.”
Well, he fiddled and diddled his way to seven birdies and just one bogey for an opening-round 6-under 66, just two strokes off the clubhouse lead set by American Cameron Young.
Fiddly, for those of you who might otherwise have to rush to the Oxford Dictionary or fire up the Google machine means “complicated or detailed and awkward to do or use.” That’s a pretty fair representation of what it is like playing a fast and firm Old Course, where the fairways are running as fast as the greens. It continued a positive trend of fast starts at the majors for McIlroy, who previously had opened 65-67 at the PGA Championship in May and the U.S. Open in June.
“Three in a row for me now,” McIlroy said. “Just sort of what you hope will happen when you’re starting off your week. Yeah, I mean I did everything that you’re supposed to do around St Andrews. I birdied the holes that are birdie-able. And I made pars at the holes where you’re sort of looking to make a par and move to the next tee. And didn’t really put myself out of position too much.”
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McIlroy made it look easy on Thursday, holing a 55-foot downhill birdie putt at the first and stringing together three birdies in a row beginning at the seventh. He tacked on another birdie at 12 and was cruising along at 5 under for the day when he made his lone bogey at the 13th – “a little bit too cute with the second shot,” he said – but bounced back with a birdie at 14 and finished in style with one final circle on the card at the last.
“Everything feels very settled. No real issues with my game,” he said. “Everything feels like it’s in good shape. Everything feels just sort of nice and quiet, which is a nice way to be.”
He played with an ease that may have been missing in recent years as McIlroy has tried to make swing changes in an effort to end his major-less drought that dates to the 2014 PGA Championship. But if he looked cool and composed on the outside, McIlroy wasn’t shy to point out that there were several pivotal moments where he had to deliver to keep his round going and he was proud of how he had come through nearly unscathed.
“It might have looked easy, but there’s certain parts of the round that are challenging,” he said.
Take, for instance, the 17th hole, the brute known as The Road Hole, that in the first round played downwind.
“I hit it way down there. And my ball’s on the fairway, but it’s in a lie where I don’t feel like I can get the leading edge of a lob wedge underneath the ball to get a good enough strike on it. So I chipped a little gap wedge down there, and I pulled it,” McIlroy explained. “But I played the right shot so that if I did miss it, it wasn’t in too bad of a spot but I could then get it up-and-down from. And that’s what I’m talking about, the trickiness. I only had 85 yards to the front of the green on 17, and I knew four was going to be a good score. So, I think it’s accepting that sometimes and not being overly aggressive, even when you put yourself in some of these positions. I think that’s important.”
In other words, McIlroy survived one of those fiddly lies that haven’t always been his cup of tea.
“I’m hopefully going to make it my forte this week,” he said.
