The first tee at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club felt like the place to be at 2.59pm on Thursday afternoon. There, a massed crowd waited patiently for Jon Rahm, Justin Rose and the man known simply as Rory to get their tournament under way at the Open. There were cheers, there was hush and, after the players sent their drives bursting into the sunshine, a slightly lubricated tribute could be heard from behind the cordon: “This is a lovely group!”
In the end, the wisdom of the crowd turned out to be largely misplaced. This inaugural gathering of the “Three Rs” failed to match expectations both high and middling. For much of the round the most memorable moment remained when Rahm, the player ranked third in the world, found a bunker after pinging the ball off a spectator’s head. Lovely was not quite the word, and although the fan remained conscious he had to be attended to by paramedics.
McIlroy had an afternoon he will probably not want to linger on. Wayward strokes and some dismal putting around the turn of the course left him short of where he clearly wanted to be, given the obvious frustration in his demeanour. Despite that, the last man to lift the claret jug at this 154-year-old course remains in the hunt at even par, and there was even the odd stroke of inspiration to leaven the mood.
“I felt like I actually played OK, I missed a couple of putts on the front nine but started to get the putter going a little bit on the back nine which was nice to see,” McIlroy said. “Even par is a solid start, I wouldn’t have minded being a couple lower but I’ll take it.
“It was tricky out there this afternoon, the wind was blowing a little bit, it felt it was hard to get close to some pins. I felt anything in the 60s would be quite a good score, I didn’t quite get there but after bogeying a couple of holes on the front I could have let the round get away from me and I didn’t.”
For Rahm and Rose, unfortunately, any memories will be of the kind that will have to be put inside a filing cabinet, triple-locked and thrown off Birkenhead ferry terminal. Rahm added insult to the spectator’s injury by stiffening up on the back nine, three-putting at the 16th, missing good birdie chances at both 15 and 17, and then bogeying the final hole to finish on 74.
Rose bogeyed the first two holes and played two provisional balls from the tee on the fifth, eventually finding his first effort in the rough and choosing to play on with that. After quietly nurdling along the back nine he managed to save enough face to finish alongside the Spaniard at three over. Still, it was unlikely to be the way Rose would want to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his appearance as an amateur sensation at Royal Birkdale.
World-class play was not overly in evidence, then, and once again there will be questions about whether McIlroy’s state of mind will leave him unable to deliver on the talent he possesses and attain the prizes he so desires. The fuddlement seemed to be characterised by his play on holes 8-10. He bogeyed the first of them by missing a putt of around 6ft, and then spent the following minute staring at the turf as if trying to work out what had happened. His approach to the par-three ninth was spot on, but he rolled the birdie chance far too far to the right and the bemusement continued. Finally, the 10th started with near disaster, only for his drive to catch a fortunate slope away from the rough. McIlroy then patched up to give himself another opportunity that he duly missed.
It was a sign of things that holing a short putt for par on the 11th felt like a line in the sand. From there McIlroy went on to sink his best shot of the day on the 13th, again saving par, then birdied the 14th and 15th. A rampant finish suddenly appeared possible but his approaches came up short. His last moment of good play was another defensive action: a superb chip out of a pot bunker on the 18th – made at the third attempt – which set up a salvaged par.
“These bunkers are just really tough,” McIlroy said. “It doesn’t seem to go into the middle of them and you’re always up against the face. I was quite lucky, it could have gone into a deeper part of my footprint and I’d have been there all night.”
