After suffering heartbreak at the U.S. Open at Pinehurst three weeks ago, Rory McIlroy stewed for a couple of days but said he’s ready to return to action at this week’s Genesis Scottish Open and see if he can handle the closing stretch better next time.
Summing up the disappointment of making three bogeys over the final four holes, including two short misses, to lose by one stroke to Bryson DeChambeau, McIlroy said, “It was a great day until it wasn’t.”
“I got over it pretty quickly,” added McIlroy, who in the aftermath opted to withdraw from the Travelers Championship the following day and take a few weeks to build himself back up ahead of the final major of the year, next week’s British Open. “The few days after it were pretty tough at times but I feel like I’ve done a good job of thinking about it rationally and constructively, and staking what I need from it and trying to learn from it. But like for the most part it was a great day…You know, there’s not a lot that I would change about what I did on Sunday for the first 14 holes. That’s the best I’ve played in that position in a long, long time.”
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McIlroy has analyzed how it all went terribly wrong and he took the time during his pre-tournament press conference in North Berwick, Scotland, to share some of his Monday Morning Quarterbacking.
“The short putt on 16 is one that I’ll probably rue most because it was a pretty simple putt,” he said. “I can vividly remember starting to feel a little uncomfortable waiting for my second putt on 16.”
He noted that he thought his birdie effort might fall but then it rolled a foot beyond tap-in range and he marked. He had a long time to think about it as his playing competitor, Patrick Cantlay, was deliberate in lining up his par effort and McIlroy said his mind began to wander.
“I hit a decent putt on 16,” he said. “I probably read that just right of center. Probably started it a touch left of that. Probably started it straight, maybe a touch left of center, and the green grabbed it and it caught the left edge. Wasn’t a terrible putt, but I definitely felt a little bit of uneasiness before I hit it.”
In replaying what went wrong at 18, where he missed a tricky 4-foot, left-to-right slider, McIlroy again pointed to a mental miscue.
“I was very aware of where Bryson was off the tee. I knew I had to hit it really soft. If the one back didn’t matter, I would have hit it firmer,” he explained. “But because I was sort of in two minds, I didn’t know whether Bryson was going to make a par or not, it was one of those ones where I had to make sure that if the putt didn’t go in, that it wasn’t going 10 feet by which it very easily could have.”
Other observations included noting that his pre-shot routine became longer and he started to look at the target a few more times over the ball than usual. He also regretted becoming too aware of what DeChambeau was doing in the group behind him and failing to stay “in my own little world for the whole 18 holes.”
“I’ll learn a lot from it and I’ll hopefully put that to good use,” McIlroy added. “It’s something that’s been a bit of a theme throughout my career. I’ve been able to take those tough moments and turn them into great things not very long after that.”
His first crack at getting back into the winner’s circle commences on Thursday, where McIlroy is the defending champion at the Scottish Open, a co-sanctioned event between the DP World Tour and PGA Tour, at The Renaissance Club. A year ago, he finished with birdies on the final two holes to edge Scotland’s own Robert MacIntyre by a shot. That included a heroic 2-iron from 202 yards into a 40-mile-per-hour wind that stopped 11 feet from the hole. The club commemorated the shot with a plaque, though they had to fix a spelling error in which the ‘I’ looked too much like an ‘L’, in the 18th fairway to mark the spot. Shortly after claiming the trophy, his first in Scotland, McIlroy told club founder Paul Sarvadi, “When I turn 80, it will be one of the five best shots I hit in my entire career.” On Wednesday, McIlroy raved just as much about his tee shot at the par-3 17th.
“Everyone talks about the 2-iron at the last but the 5-iron I hit into 17 was just as good a shot if not a little bit better,” McIlroy said. “To hit two iron shots like that and to hole the putts when I needed to, yeah, it was awesome. Sort of I felt in some ways bad that it came at the expense of Bob but at the same time it was amazing to win a tournament that I had never won before.”
McIlroy speaks from experience of knowing both the thrill of victory that day at The Renaissance Club and the agony of defeat at places such as Pinehurst and he’s ready to put the past behind him and get back in the arena.
“It hurt but I felt worse after some other losses,” McIlroy said of his U.S. Open heartbreak. “I felt worse after Augusta in ’11 and I felt worse after St Andrews (in ’22). It was up there with the tough losses but not the toughest.”
