What has gone wrong with Rory McIlroy and what does he need?

You’ve got to believe Rory McIlroy has been looking in the mirror quite a lot recently. The man staring back at him might look familiar, but he lacks something. Is it the twinkle in those dancing eyes that was always there? It seems to have gone missing.

Not lost. Just gone Awol; and the root cause has got to be his putting, always considered an Achilles’ heel but now a liability. There are no quick fixes.

I’ve watched McIlroy play since he was turning heads as a teenage amateur; conquering all before him in the West of Ireland at Rosses Point and claiming back-to-back Irish Closes, he was a boy wonder destined for greatness.

I’ve been at all 32 of his appearances in the Majors. His first one was the British Open at Carnoustie in 2007, when he was the amateur medallist and Pádraig Harrington, the champion, told those gathered around the 18th green that he was only glad to get his hands on the Claret Jug because he predicted it would be ever tougher to do so in future with McIlroy around.

Harrington didn’t need to be a soothsayer to know that the young man beside him was a special talent.

And McIlroy has delivered: he has won four Major titles, which for the vast majority of professional golfers would represent a truly great career. For most.

This PGA Championship could yet prove to be a game-changer for McIlroy. Never before have his putting shortcomings been as cruelly exposed as here on the bent/poa annua green/brown surfaces.

Nemesis

McIlroy couldn't hole or buy a putt and the agony was compounded as he was forced to watch time and time again as Jason Day – fast-becoming a nemesis – routinely holed one putt after another.

In one of those rounds, McIlroy’s total length of putts holed amounted to less than 40 feet, Day’s to more than 140 feet.

Yet, in all honesty, it was hard to see a poor performance coming. On Tuesday and Wednesday, McIlroy played practice rounds in the company of Jimmy Walker and, having watched them diligently go about their business, it seemed abundantly clear that one more than the other entertained serious hopes of winning the Wanamaker Trophy. And, to anyone observing, it wasn't Walker.

McIlroy had a bounce in his stride during those practice days that became a weary walk as the championship progressed.

Out-of-control child

Damned statistics and all that, but there can be no denying that the putter was like an out-of-control child in a classroom.

McIlroy ranked 151st of 156 players in putting through the first two rounds; contrast this with the fact that he ranked number one in driving, meaning his ball-striking off the tee was better than anyone in the field. The putter was his ruination here, make no mistake about it, but there were also loose approach shots with irons (especially to the 18th hole on Friday) which, perhaps, were a consequence of trying to get the ball closer to the flag in the knowledge that the putter couldn’t be trusted.

One of the sights of this PGA Championship came on Thursday evening, when McIlroy was on the practice green with his coach Michael Bannon. For hours, the player hit ball after ball in an attempt to work out his problem with the putter. Bannon, patiently and conscientiously, oversaw it all.

But Bannon, his long-time coach and the man responsible for McIlroy developing the best and smoothest swing of the modern game, is not a putting specialist. He doesn’t profess to be.

Further help is needed, and the evidence is that this is one issue that will not be corrected through self-help.

Reputation

In the aftermath of the 2011 US Masters, McIlroy sought out Dave Stockton’s advice and almost instantly won the US Open.

Stockton has a reputation for being a putting expert but perhaps there was too much credit at the time given to his impact.

After all, McIlroy was playing with a joie de vivre that made the game look easy; really he only needed a piece of the jigsaw to be pushed into place.

That Stockton was not integrated fully into Team McIlroy subsequently would suggest that the player believed he deserved more credit for his own hard work in resolving the issue.

Of the 32 Majors in which McIlroy has competed, he has missed six cuts. A number have unquestionably been due to his problems on the greens, most notably the US Open at Merion in 2012 and this year’s US Open at Oakmont.

Now, this.

“I need to do something,” McIlroy remarked as he departed the premises on Friday night, a visit to the Carl Frampton-Leo Santa Cruz world title fight at least providing a pick-me-up of sorts.

Elephant in the room

And describing a missed cut and his putting as “disheartening”, there’s no denying the fact that McIlroy’s putting is the elephant in the room that needs to be dealt with.

The time has come to take whatever action, as drastic as it may need to be, to sort matters out. He needs to look as if he’s enjoying golf again, to get that sparkle in his eyes back.

Will we see a switch to a mallet putter? Would its greater sweet spot and weight not benefit him more than the blade which is primarily a ‘feel’ piece of equipment?

Does he start working with a sports psychologist?

What about seeing a special putting coach? If not Stockton again, someone else?

These are the hard questions McIlroy must find the answer to in the coming days and weeks before he resumes tournament action at The Barclays, the first of the FedEx Cup series on the PGA Tour.

The Majors have come and gone for this year and that means an eight-month wait for the next – the Masters at Augusta in April – before McIlroy will get the chance to add to his four Major titles. At Augusta he’ll again get to chase that final leg of the career grand slam. But it’s two years since he last won a Major, at the 2014 PGA in Valhalla.

Some solace? Time is on his side.

And, as Phil Mickelson observed: "Right now he's just so tentative through impact. He's just not confident. You can just tell. You watch him with a driver and it's the sweetest thing you can imagine. It just goes through effortlessly with so much speed and power, and the ball just flies so long and true with such a tight flight pattern. He's just not striking his putts with the same confidence as he is his driver. That comes and goes.

“When he won his US Open at Congressional, I played him a couple of rounds there, he was just rolling it beautifully. Just rolling it beautifully.

“It’s not that he’s not capable. He’s just having a period where he’s not feeling it. He will get it back.”

The elephant needs to be shoved out of the room. The time for cajoling is gone.