Rory McIlroy’s game remains a work in progress.
The Northern Irishman finished with a birdie at 18 on Thursday to shoot even-par 70 in more difficult afternoon conditions and hoped to build on that momentum. But he opened his second round at Royal St. George’s in Sandwich, England, with two bogeys en route to shooting 70 again and enters the weekend at least nine strokes behind the leader at the midway point of the 149th British Open.
“Two bogeys in the first two holes sort of put me behind the 8-ball a little bit,” McIlroy said.
“It’s felt close, but it just hasn’t quite been close enough,” he added of the current state of his game. “Just got to keep working on it and persist with it and keep my head down and keep going.”
McIlroy battled back after the inauspicious start with birdies at Nos. 4, 9 and 12 to get into red figures, but made two late bogeys to spoil his slow climb up the leaderboard.
“Then a mental error on 16, trying to get too close with my tee shot. I hit a club that was barely going to get over the bunker if I hit it exactly right, it just didn’t quite cover,” he explained. “It sort of tempted me into trying to hit a really hard sand wedge and didn’t get that up-and-down.”
He compounded his error by missing a short par putt at 17, but lessened the blow by finishing with a birdie for the second day.
“It was nice to birdie 18 and at least make sure that I’m here for the weekend because I think at 1 over I would have been sweating a little bit,” he said.
Unless McIlroy makes a remarkable weekend charge, he will head to the Masters in April without a major title since the 2014 PGA Championship, a span of seven years. Asked if he was trying too hard to break his dry spell, he said, “Not at all. I’ve got four of them. Geez, look, I’ve got – I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I get to do what I love for a living. I have a beautiful family. My life is absolutely perfect at the minute. I want for nothing, so it’s not a case of trying too hard, for sure.”
But McIlroy also made clear that this isn’t a case of complacency either.
“It’s tough to be here and just say I’m glad to be here for the weekend, but the position I find myself in on the 18th tee, that’s the reality,” he said.
McIlroy, the Champion Golfer of the Year in 2014, lost his World No. 1 ranking last year and has slipped back to No. 11 in the world. He began working with instructor Pete Cowen ahead of the Masters in April and won the Wells Fargo Championship in May, but it hasn’t translated into major glory: missed cut at the Masters, T-49 at the PGA, T-7 at the U.S. Open. He’s dug himself a big hole at Royal St. George’s.
“If I was really on my game and sharp with how I’ve played the last two days, I probably could have been 6- or 7-under,” he said. “But it’s just not – it’s close, it’s just not close enough.”
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