Rory McIlroy’s Open Championship did not end how he’d have wanted.
A poor weekend brought him way out of contention. He shot level par over the final two days in a disappointing showing at Royal Birkdale.
Three players have shot a round of 62 this weekend, so the leaders simply ran away from McIlroy as he struggled to get it out of neutral. He never quite got to grips with this historic Open Championship venue.
Rory McIlroy says Royal Birkdale doesn’t feel like a links course
Much of Royal Birkdale was redesigned before the Open Championship, with several holes completely changed to accommodate the distances of modern golf. But McIlroy thinks these changes have taken some of the links feel away from the course.
Speaking after his third round, he said, “I feel like with a lot of the changes they made, the greens were raised up and a lot of the fall-offs and stuff, it didn’t play like a traditional links course. I didn’t feel like you could run the ball up to a lot of greens. There was a lot of stuff where you still had to fly the ball on.
“I’m not saying that’s the reason I didn’t play well this week, just it wasn’t — it didn’t feel like it was sort of your typical links test, or certainly wasn’t the links test that Birkdale presented in 2017.”
McIlroy’s putting was particularly poor this week. He lost 0.64 strokes to the field on the greens over the course of the tournament.
He said they were a little too soft for his liking: “You get these patches of the green that are very green, and then you get patches that are not.
“Yeah, it provides — you know, they’re inconsistent to hit into. You can get a dry spot, and it bounces on. You could get a spongy green spot, and it stays where it is.
“You’re sort of having to look at the colour of the green to see if it’s going to be a fast putt or a slow putt just because of — they’ve been hard to judge and hard to sort of get a handle on all week.
“For me, I haven’t watched a ton of the golf, but it seems like a lot of guys are struggling on the greens as well.”
Links greens have given the likes of Scottie Scheffler problems for a number of years, but you’d think after weeks of preparation, McIlroy would have gotten used to the speed of the greens.
It could be an issue at the likes of Pebble Beach for next year’s US Open, which gives players similar issues on the greens.
Receive exclusive football transfer news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
