IT WAS THROUGH that gorgeous dapple of morning sun at Quail Hollow which Rory McIlroy strode, emerging from the trees wearing a t-shirt of deep green.
The colour palette would name it an off-Masters green, but it wasn’t all that was off-colour.
Today’s opening round at the PGA Championship was supposed to be the first act after Rory McIlroy slayed his final boss; the post-credits part of the game in which McIlroy is freed to veer off and gather the collectibles and complete the side-quests at his own leisurely pace.
But an opening round of 74 has left him miles off the pace and left us with a very familiar feeling. Is he out of this already?
At three-over par, McIlroy’s currently outside the top 100 on the leaderboard and the game’s most famous player is tied with such luminaries as Tom Johnson, Bud Caley, Eric Steger, and Walker Eagleson. (To emphasise our point, we have invented one of these players. If you know who our fake player is. . . you’re watching too much golf.)*
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McIlroy was given a blockbuster grouping with Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele but it proved to be a box-office flop. Schauffele struggled to a one-over 72 while Scheffler mixed in some black swan mistakes before somehow signing for a two-under 69.
Neither, however, played as poorly as McIlroy.
He hardly holed a putt – losing almost 2.5 strokes on the greens alone – but was also undermined by his supposed superpower, hitting just three fairways off the tee all day. This continued a sloppiness that seeped into his game at the Truist Championship last weekend, where he hit just seven fairways in total across two rounds.
Today McIlroy continually missed left off the tee, and his scorecard could truly have been uglier than it is, coming mightily close to finding the water on 15. (He took his gift and made birdie.)
McIlroy teed off on the tenth hole and made birdie straight away, and when he spanked his drive off the 11th tee, he turned to Harry Diamond and said without conviction, “I think I hit it well enough.” He found his ball in a left-side bunker and immediately handed his shot back with a three-putt bogey.
Quail Hollow has the cadence of a three-act play: holes one through six are an early test before holes seven through 15 provide players with their scoring opportunities. Players then cling tightly to their loot and do their best to survive the closing three holes, the Green Mile.
That McIlroy and co teed off on the 10th interrupted this rhythm, and so his scoring chances came early in his round. He missed them all. He could only par the par-four 12th despite a spanking a drive down the fairway’s throat and then missed a birdie putt having driven the short par-four 14th.
A total score of even-par proved insufficient mitigation against the sentence handed down by the Green Mile. Having blasted way left on 16, he slipped as he tried to lay back up on the fairway, and so his second shot measured all of 65 feet. He could ultimately only get down for double-bogey which, remarkably, was the same for each of his playing partners, as both Schauffele and Scheffler found mud on their balls in the fairway and sent their second shots sailing over the green and into the water.
Scheffler later said that it was the first time in his life he retained the honour having made double-bogey. It was also the first time Scheffler has made a double in the opening round of a major championship, while it was McIlroy’s first double at Quail Hollow since his debut here in 2010. (Any omen-watchers will of course note he went on to sneak inside the cut line and then win the tournament.)
That the top three-ranked players in the world all made a double on the same hole rippled among the crowds, creating concentric circles first of disbelief and then of a perverse kind of excitement. Keegan Bradley was walking a fairway a couple of holes behind McIlroy, and his son ran on to greet him before scuttling back to his mum to announce, “Mom, Rory McIlroy made double-bogey!”
McIlroy did his best work from the deeper shades of green, with flourishes of that eternal magic in an iron out of the rough by the creek on 18 and a trademark, elbow-popping muscle out of the rough on the second hole.
But all of his best work was made on a war footing: he didn’t card a single birdie across his closing 12 holes, and he finished with a fist-gnawing bogey on his final hole, having – you guessed it – sent his drive into the left-side rough.
The crowds around that tee box had moved on as McIlroy stood squirming over his driver. Scheffler and Schauffele spoke to the media afterwards, but McIlroy didn’t re-appear for the assembled press after signing his card, instead heading to the driving range.
This was McIlroy’s worst round at Quail Hollow since 2018, and he withdrew into the clubhouse eight shots behind the early leader Ryan Gerard. Given all but one of the last 35 winners of this championship have been within at least six shots of the lead at the end of their first round, he has likely played himself out of this thing at the first opportunity.
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“You go get it tomorrow, Mac”, urged a fan at McIlroy as he walked off.
The Masters victory evidently hasn’t changed everything: tomorrow is again the only redeeming feature of Rory McIlroy’s opening round at a major.
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Masters triumph of little help as McIlroy flops in blockbuster group at PGA Championship
IT WAS THROUGH that gorgeous dapple of morning sun at Quail Hollow which Rory McIlroy strode, emerging from the trees wearing a t-shirt of deep green.
The colour palette would name it an off-Masters green, but it wasn’t all that was off-colour.
Today’s opening round at the PGA Championship was supposed to be the first act after Rory McIlroy slayed his final boss; the post-credits part of the game in which McIlroy is freed to veer off and gather the collectibles and complete the side-quests at his own leisurely pace.
But an opening round of 74 has left him miles off the pace and left us with a very familiar feeling. Is he out of this already?
At three-over par, McIlroy’s currently outside the top 100 on the leaderboard and the game’s most famous player is tied with such luminaries as Tom Johnson, Bud Caley, Eric Steger, and Walker Eagleson. (To emphasise our point, we have invented one of these players. If you know who our fake player is. . . you’re watching too much golf.)*
McIlroy was given a blockbuster grouping with Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele but it proved to be a box-office flop. Schauffele struggled to a one-over 72 while Scheffler mixed in some black swan mistakes before somehow signing for a two-under 69.
Neither, however, played as poorly as McIlroy.
He hardly holed a putt – losing almost 2.5 strokes on the greens alone – but was also undermined by his supposed superpower, hitting just three fairways off the tee all day. This continued a sloppiness that seeped into his game at the Truist Championship last weekend, where he hit just seven fairways in total across two rounds.
Today McIlroy continually missed left off the tee, and his scorecard could truly have been uglier than it is, coming mightily close to finding the water on 15. (He took his gift and made birdie.)
McIlroy teed off on the tenth hole and made birdie straight away, and when he spanked his drive off the 11th tee, he turned to Harry Diamond and said without conviction, “I think I hit it well enough.” He found his ball in a left-side bunker and immediately handed his shot back with a three-putt bogey.
Quail Hollow has the cadence of a three-act play: holes one through six are an early test before holes seven through 15 provide players with their scoring opportunities. Players then cling tightly to their loot and do their best to survive the closing three holes, the Green Mile.
That McIlroy and co teed off on the 10th interrupted this rhythm, and so his scoring chances came early in his round. He missed them all. He could only par the par-four 12th despite a spanking a drive down the fairway’s throat and then missed a birdie putt having driven the short par-four 14th.
A total score of even-par proved insufficient mitigation against the sentence handed down by the Green Mile. Having blasted way left on 16, he slipped as he tried to lay back up on the fairway, and so his second shot measured all of 65 feet. He could ultimately only get down for double-bogey which, remarkably, was the same for each of his playing partners, as both Schauffele and Scheffler found mud on their balls in the fairway and sent their second shots sailing over the green and into the water.
Scheffler later said that it was the first time in his life he retained the honour having made double-bogey. It was also the first time Scheffler has made a double in the opening round of a major championship, while it was McIlroy’s first double at Quail Hollow since his debut here in 2010. (Any omen-watchers will of course note he went on to sneak inside the cut line and then win the tournament.)
That the top three-ranked players in the world all made a double on the same hole rippled among the crowds, creating concentric circles first of disbelief and then of a perverse kind of excitement. Keegan Bradley was walking a fairway a couple of holes behind McIlroy, and his son ran on to greet him before scuttling back to his mum to announce, “Mom, Rory McIlroy made double-bogey!”
McIlroy did his best work from the deeper shades of green, with flourishes of that eternal magic in an iron out of the rough by the creek on 18 and a trademark, elbow-popping muscle out of the rough on the second hole.
But all of his best work was made on a war footing: he didn’t card a single birdie across his closing 12 holes, and he finished with a fist-gnawing bogey on his final hole, having – you guessed it – sent his drive into the left-side rough.
The crowds around that tee box had moved on as McIlroy stood squirming over his driver. Scheffler and Schauffele spoke to the media afterwards, but McIlroy didn’t re-appear for the assembled press after signing his card, instead heading to the driving range.
This was McIlroy’s worst round at Quail Hollow since 2018, and he withdrew into the clubhouse eight shots behind the early leader Ryan Gerard. Given all but one of the last 35 winners of this championship have been within at least six shots of the lead at the end of their first round, he has likely played himself out of this thing at the first opportunity.
“You go get it tomorrow, Mac”, urged a fan at McIlroy as he walked off.
The Masters victory evidently hasn’t changed everything: tomorrow is again the only redeeming feature of Rory McIlroy’s opening round at a major.
*It’s Walker Eagleson, by the way.
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2025 pga championship Golf inside the ropes Rory McIlroy