After the frenzy of the 150th Open, time for some calm. For Rory McIlroy most of all.
Unsurprisingly, the Northern Irishman has chosen to take a three-week break from all competition before returning to action for next month’s PGA Tour playoffs – the FedEx St Jude, the BMW and the Tour Championship – where he again heads in empty-handed from his season’s work in the Majors.
McIlroy was the only player to finish in the top-10 in all four Majors this year, which will be small consolation. He was also only the third player in the last 50 years to finish in the top-8 in all four without actually winning, a statistic previously shared by Ben Crenshaw (1987) and Rickie Fowler (2014).
All of which shows how well McIlroy has played in each of those four targeted Majors this year, but also how he has failed – in spite of his best efforts – to get the job done.
“I’ve been close and I keep knocking on the door. I can’t get too down on myself because the game is there. It’s just a matter of staying patient,” he insisted.
This latest failure will hurt more than any, for several reasons. For someone immersed in the history of the sport, a win on the Old Course at St Andrews – a la Nicklaus and Woods – would have held a special place in his career CV; and, in truth, McIlroy played well enough to win, apart from the one weapon that is most important of them all: the putter!
McIlroy took too many putts, and didn’t hole enough of those chances he’d created. It got into his head. As he honestly described it afterwards: “I couldn’t just trust myself to start it inside the hole. I was always starting it on the edge or just outside, thinking it was going to move. More times than not, they just sort of stayed there.”
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And, indeed, that putting proved to be the difference in the winning and losing of the Claret Jug. Ironically, and again it will be small consolation, McIlroy’s putting on the PGA Tour this season has improved and he is actually statistically better than Smith on the data to date, ninth to 12th in strokes-gained-putting.
If this latest disappointment adds some further scar tissue to those close-but-no-cigar experiences since last lifting a Major title in the US PGA of 2014, that winless drought now extending into a ninth year when he gets back in action at the Masters next April when that missing link in the career Grand Slam will again be a factor, McIlroy can use the next three weeks to recalibrate ahead of a bid to again win the FedEx Cup, with his return to competition scheduled for the FedEx St Jude Championship in Memphis on August 11th-14th.
Shane Lowry and Séamus Power are also taking short breaks before getting back into the swing of things on the PGA Tour, where both players are on course to make debut appearances in the Tour Championship at East Lake where the top-30 players in the FedEx Cup standings qualify. Lowry is currently 26th and Power 24th in that order of merit.
Lowry has never made it as far as Atlanta, so that is his primary objective before returning for late-season events in Europe.
“The Tour Championship for the PGA Tour is obviously huge, and I’ve got some big tournaments left in Europe as well. So I’ve obviously got a lot to play for. I’d really like to get back to well inside that top 20 in the world. I’ve got that to play for towards the end year. Hopefully I can just kind of keep doing what I’m doing and find a bit on the greens, and I’ll be dangerous enough,” said Lowry.
Power missed the cut in his Open debut and has yet to decide on his exact schedule ahead of the FedEx Cup playoffs.
“I’m not sure if I will play Detroit [Rocket Mortgages championship], that’s the one I’m not sure about. Hopefully I’ll say Memphis [St Jude], Maryland [BMW] and then hopefully all the way to Atlanta,” said the Waterford man.
Pádraig Harrington has a different focus this week, as the 50-year-old Dubliner aims for a second senior Major to add to his US Seniors Open win. Harrington is playing in the British Seniors Open at Gleneagles.
On the DP World Tour, there are seven Irish players – Niall Kearney, Jonathan Caldwell, Cormac Sharvin, Paul Dunne, Gavin Moynihan, Simon Thornton and David Higgins – competing in the Cazoo Classic at Hillside in England.
