Rory McIlroy Is Contending at Memorial Despite Swing Issue Any Golfer Can Relate To
DUBLIN, Ohio – Most everyday golfers would struggle to relate to the game Rory McIlroy plays, but he’s now dealing with something that nearly all can understand: the ability – or lack thereof – to bring your game from the practice tee to the golf course.
McIlroy, who tripled-bogeyed the 18th hole on Thursday to shoot 72, rebounded with a 4-under-par 68 on Friday at Muirfield Village Golf Club to finish three strokes behind clubhouse leader Hideki Matsuyama after the second round of the Memorial Tournament.
And he acknowledged that what he practiced on Thursday evening and before teeing off Friday morning didn’t exactly translate to what he did on the course.
“Just building on the feels that I’ve been trying to work on,’’ McIlroy said. “This is a process. The swing that I make on the range compared to the swings I make out there (on the course), they’re not the same. They won’t match up for awhile.
“So it’s just a matter of working little by little, sort of trying to do it every day that the feels become more comfortable so that over time it just sort of beds in itself.’’
Those comments are not surprising in the context of McIlroy’s most recent struggles, which saw him miss the cut at the Players Championship and at the Masters, admit he needed to take some time away, barely make the cut at the Wells Fargo Championship and then say he “felt so uncomfortable’’ over the ball two weeks ago at the PGA Championship.
And yet, he’s ranked third in the world, has a victory earlier this year in Dubai, was third at the WGC-Dell Match Play, tied for second at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and managed to tie for seventh at the PGA Championship.
“If you’ve let your swing get to a certain place over the course of say six months, there’s no way that you’re going to work for two weeks and all of a sudden it’s going to be where you want it to be,’’ McIlroy said. “I think it’s the smart way to do it, to just let it bed in over time. I’m not saying it will take six months to get where I want to, but it will certainly take longer than a week or two.’’
All of this suggests his troubles go back a bit more than recent times.
“These things were creeping in at the end of 2022, probably,’’ he said. “And again, that's why it was — we have all been advocating for an off-season and — it's very hard to try to play your best golf when you're really thinking about your golf swing.
“So that off-season time would be nice to work on your mechanics and your fundamentals so that you've got those sort of bedded in so that you can sort of roll going into the bulk of the season. I didn't really feel like I had the necessary time to do that so my reluctancy to work on ... like I know it's been creeping in, but reluctancy to work on it was more to do with the fact of how much golf we had coming up and just not really wanting to be thinking about my golf swing a ton.’’
That doesn’t necessarily bode well for McIlroy’s title defense next week at the RBC Canadian Open. Or the U.S. Open in two weeks at Los Angeles Country Club.
But it’s impressive that McIlroy was able to finish among the top 10 two weeks ago at Oak Hill when he clearly did not feel comfortable. And he’s managed to stay in contention here, despite the triple to end his round on Thursday. He made six birdies and four bogeys.
And he hit just 8 of 14 fairways and 11 greens during the second round.
“I felt good about everything I did yesterday,’’ he said. “I got one bad break on 18 with that ball finishing on the bank of the bunker. So I really feel like I’m one shot out of leading this golf tournament. That rolls down into the bunker, hopefully able to hit it on the green and make a 4, and instead standing here at 4 under. I would be at 7 under and feeling really good about everything.
“I can’t let that one sort of unlucky break sort of hide the fact that everything else was working well.’’