Rory McIlroy has shared his verdict on the quality of his driving during the opening round of the Memorial Tournament after making a change ahead of the event.
McIlroy is looking for his first ever victory at Muirfield Village this week. The Memorial Tournament remains the only PGA Tour event the 37-year-old has never won having made at least 10 starts.
He is certainly not out of the mix after his first round in Ohio on Thursday.
Rory McIlroy assesses his performance with his new driver at the Memorial Tournament
McIlroy made four birdies, one bogey and one double bogey on his way to posting a 71. That left him a handful of shots back of the leaders at Jack’s Place.
Much of the focus was on McIlroy’s bag heading into the latest signature event on the PGA Tour. McIlroy opted to use a driver with a heavier shaft in the hope of improving his accuracy.
And speaking after his first round, the Northern Irishman discussed how he felt about his performance off the tee.
“I feel like I drove it pretty well. Again, anytime I hit driver here I’m still feeling like I’m hitting into the narrowest part of the fairway. So I hit some good drives that didn’t end up being in the fairway, but I felt like they were pretty good drives,” he said.
“I had a couple of bad ones. I think some of the lines you have to take with driver here, whether it’s hitting up over trees or trying to cut corners, it’s much easier just hitting into a nice, like, straight strip on the range.
“So, yeah, just some of the looks out there are a bit different. But overall, I felt like it was an improvement from what I’ve been seeing with the driver over the past few weeks.”
The statistics behind Rory McIlroy’s opening round
Interestingly, you would be forgiven for not realising McIlroy had made any sort of change based on his statistics alone.
At the time of writing, McIlroy is second in the field for driving distance, averaging just under 327 yards for the first round.
Meanwhile, he hit seven of his 14 fairways. Obviously, McIlroy’s comments do suggest that number is slightly misleading. But he was still well down the field for strokes gained off the tee.
It is a gamble to change things up so close to the third major of the year. It was not too long ago that McIlroy briefly switched to a more forgiving set of irons. That move did not work out too well.
But given how important driving has always been to McIlroy’s game, perhaps it should come as no surprise that he felt that a change was needed.
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