It was a mixed day for Rory McIlroy in the first round of The Open.
The 2014 champion struggled for consistency at Royal Birkdale, particularly with his short game and putting, resulting in him making six bogeys and four birdies to finish two over.
That leaves the Masters champion seven shots behind first-round leader Jackson Suber and tied for 85th in pursuit of his second Major title of the year.
However, McIlroy is determined to take the positives from his performance despite an up-and-down first round.
He said: “I'll start with the positives. I drove the ball incredibly well. I took the golf course on off the tee. Obviously with the positions that I put myself in off the tee, I feel like I obviously should have shot a better score. Played the hard holes well. Birdied 13, 15 and 18 on the back.”
While there was much to admire off the tee from McIlroy, he acknowledged that there were too many mistakes further on, which included missing several putts from inside four feet to leave him 148th out of 156th for Strokes Gained: Putting.
He added: “The two bogeys on the par-5s wasn't great and I struggled the first two holes to get the speed of the greens.
“I felt like they were very inconsistent, just because some parts of the greens are still alive and growing and other parts have went really dead.
“It's like, you've got this - sort of reminds me a bit of Pebble Beach when Pebble Beach gets like that for a US Open. It's just hard to judge the speed sometimes. Struggled with that early on.
“Sort of felt like I got it going a little bit, but yeah, just too many stupid mistakes. But every time I made a stupid mistake, thankfully I made a birdie to sort of keep myself in it."
Recent history tells us McIlroy isn't out of it just yet. After all, he was also seven behind after the first round of the 2025 Masters before going on to complete his career Grand Slam.
Perhaps even more crucially, McIlroy was also in the afternoon wave in the first round of The Open, where the wind became more of a factor and the already firm, fast conditions became increasingly difficult to contend with.
McIlroy believes with the benefit of a morning tee time on Friday, he could yet surge up the leaderboard if he can take advantage of the more benign conditions that are expected to greet the earlier starters.
He said: "Not too far away. Hopefully we'll get the better conditions tomorrow and maybe the greens are a little bit smoother in the morning. Go out there and shoot a good one and get myself right back in it for the weekend."
Elaborating on the probability of kinder conditions, he added: “If you look at the discrepancy between the scoring this morning and the scoring this afternoon, it looks like that's going to be flipped tomorrow with the conditions again.
“Hopefully I can take advantage of the more benign conditions in the morning and shoot one under par and get back in it.”
McIlroy's round finished on a high with a birdie, and he revealed he'll try to take that bit of momentum into Friday.
He said: "Yeah, a little bit. I felt like I learned quite a bit today about how the course is playing, how the ball is reacting out of the first cut of rough. Definitely when it gets that burnt and that dry, it can sort of do some weird things.
"I feel like it exaggerates the spin quite a lot. If you're hitting a draw or hitting a fade, it seems to exaggerate the spin on the ball a lot. Happened to me a few times out there."
McIlroy may have plenty of work ahead of him, but he reiterated that, despite the gap between himself and the leader, he doesn’t need to fix too much to haul himself into contention.
“I'm not going to go back to the house and analyze it too much tonight,” he said. “Again, focus on the positives, which was I took it on off the tee and drove the ball very, very well, hit some really good shots. I made too many sloppy mistakes and just need to cut those out.”
McIlroy begins the second round at 10.09am local time alongside Xander Schauffele and Matt Fitzpatrick.
