British Open 2024: Rory McIlroy stumbles to 78, but save your takes for another day

TROON, Scotland — It’s only Thursday, and Thursdays are not for extrapolating. A final round, hypothesize away. Final rounds are where someone’s spirit and heart are on the line with every shot, even though the shots from the days before count the same, because there’s a trophy to be grabbed or fumbled or remain just out of reach. The final round can only matter because of the round before it, and you better believe a round that ends with a cut matters too. But Thursdays? Extracting anything of substance from Thursdays can be a fool’s errand, if not wildly unfair to the player who authored the performance.

Which is a long way of saying, save your Rory McIlroy takes, at least until tomorrow.

McIlroy, the man engaged in a forever war with who he once was against the hope of what he could be again, is no closer to ending that battle at the Open Championship, a sloppy inward nine equating to a seven-over 78 on Thursday at Royal Troon.

“It felt OK. I've come in here playing really well. I played well at the Renaissance last week,” McIlroy said. “I think, if anything, it was more like the conditions got the better of me, those cross-winds … Then once we turned on that back nine, it was left-to-right winds. I was sort of struggling to hole the ball in that wind a little bit, and that got me.”

For the first few hours McIlroy held his own, bouncing back from an opening bogey with a birdie at the third. Yet links golf is like the Marines, rejecting anything less than good, and McIlroy didn't bring his best.

The first sign of trouble came at the Postage Stamp, McIlroy’s approach at the diminutive hole finding the bunker and his second failing to leave the sand. He couldn’t convert a save for 4 and walked away with double. Another bogey came two holes later at the 10th and the wheels came off at the 11th after McIlroy pumped his drive right of the railroad out-of-bounds, leading to a double. There were two more bogeys at the 15th and 18th, and McIlroy couldn’t birdie the par-5 16th, the only hole playing under round on the day. Frankly, it could have been worse, as McIlroy was 130th in strokes gained/off-the-tee at a course that demands precision.

Now, McIlroy is not the only one left battered and bruised by Troon. When he finished just eight players had completed under-par rounds and the afternoon wave wasn’t doing much to instill confidence that number would exponentially grow. But this wasn’t just a few bad breaks or bad swings. McIlroy seemed routinely incredulous, at the course or perhaps himself, that what was happening shouldn’t be happening.

“It was definitely tricky. It was difficult,” McIlroy said. “You plan, you play your practice rounds, and you try to come up with a strategy that you think is going to get you around the golf course. Then when the wind is like that, other options present themselves, and you start to second guess yourself a little bit. Yeah, the conditions were tough on that back nine, and I just didn't do a good enough job.”

There’s no need to rehash that McIlroy’s major total of four has remained at four for some time, and given the heartbreak suffered the last time we saw him on this stage, it’s easy—desirable, even—to correlate Thursday’s performance lingering scar tissue from his U.S. Open stumble. That he’s still hurt, that expectation often leads to disappointment. But that overlooks McIlroy’s play last week at the Scottish Open, where he finished T-4. Likewise, a good round Thursday wouldn’t have wiped away the Pinehurst pain.

Should he fail to make a charge Friday, there will be plenty of time to discuss what this says, if anything, about who McIlroy is and where he’s going and what he’s got left. That time is not now. There are still at least 18 holes to play and possibly 54 on tap at a championship known for facilitating anything and everything.

“All I need to focus on is tomorrow and try to make the cut,” McIlroy said. “That's all I can focus on.”

It’s worth noting Thursday was his worst major round since his opening 79 at Royal Portrush in 2019. That was the Open where McIlroy made valiant Friday charge in front of his countrymen to make the cut, only to come up short and come undone afterwards, quickly changing his narrative of disappointment into something more. Which is why we say again, save your Rory McIlroy takes, at least until tomorrow.