Rory McIlroy played his slowest-ever round. Then came different kind of test

When Rory McIlroy, who has played golf for nearly all of his 37 years and for nearly two decades professionally, came off the course after his first round at the Irish Open on Thursday, he said something alarming: 

“I can’t recall a round of golf that has taken that long before. We’ve had some rounds that are five-and-a-half or five-and-three-quarter hours, but six hours is a first for me.”

McIlroy wasn’t being hyperbolic. He and his playing partners, Robert MacIntyre and Brooks Koepka, had started their round at Doonbeg, on Ireland’s southwest coast, at 1:35 p.m. local time. Their group’s final putt dropped at 7:41, meaning their round clocked in at a cool 6 hours and 6 minutes, or roughly the same time it takes to fly from New York to Dublin.

The reasons were many: a one-tee start for the 138-player field; wet and windy conditions that made an already difficult test a bogey-breathing beast; and a 20-minute Erik van Rooyen ruling early in the proceedings that brought the slog to a halt. “When you’re playing a round of golf and it takes six hours, it’s hard to get into the rhythm of things,” McIlroy said. Scotsman Ewen Ferguson, speaking on Friday, was less diplomatic. “I made a few mistakes coming in yesterday, just with kind of being knackered and wanting it done, to be honest, and also, like, a lapse of concentration,” he said. “Golf shouldn’t take that long.”

For McIlroy, who this week is defending his stirring Irish Open victory from a year ago, his literal and figurative (one-under 69) slow start left him chasing leader Joaquin Niemann (65). Earlier in the week, McIlroy had spoken about how much last year’s victory at the K Club, near Dublin, had meant not only to him but also to the Irish people. “The scenes of the celebrations and dads and sons hugging each other, it was very fulfilling,” he said. On Thursday, though, the scene at 18 resembled nothing close to that: McIlroy’s group was greeted by near-empty grandstands under fading light.   

Still, McIlroy was just four back, and the Friday forecast promised — and delivered — fairer conditions. McIlroy went off early, at 9:30 a.m. He avoided any real messiness, like the double-bogey he’d made on the par-4 14th hole Thursday, but never got going, at least not in any meaningful way. A birdie at 2 was negated by a bogey at 7, and a kick-in eagle at the par-5 8th was wiped away by two back-nine bogeys, at 11 and 18. One other birdie, at 17, led to another 69.  

“Frustration,” is how McIlroy described his primary emotion at round’s end. “I just didn’t have it on the greens. I really struggled to read them. It’s hard whenever you struggle to read them, and then when you do get over the ball you’re trying to trust what you’re seeing, but everything else that you have seen hasn’t went the way you thought, so it’s hard to put a committed stroke on it.”

Welcome to Doonbeg, where original designer Greg Norman put enough slopes in the greens to put a scare into Tony Hawk. Martin Hawtree tamed the surfaces in a 2014 redo but clearly some challenge remains. On Friday, McIlroy missed eight putts within 12 feet.    

“It’s a reading issue,” he said when pressed. “I’m starting them on my lines, so that’s not really an issue. I feel like I’m pretty good at that. It’s just getting the right read and then trusting it I think is — like the putt that I holed on 17. The only reason I holed that is because I saw what Brooks did before me, it was on the exact same line. So if I can get me some more putts like that where someone can show me the line then that would be good.”

At two under through two rounds, McIlroy is now in pursuit of new leader, his old pal Shane Lowry, who was so in command of his game Friday that early in the back nine he had visions of shooting 59. Instead, Lowry had to settle for a ho-hum eight-under 62 that moved him to 11 under. 

It’ll take a mighty surge for McIlroy to catch his mate, but he’s hopeful more foul weather, which is forecast for Saturday, will give him an edge because tough conditions, he said, put a premium on ball-striking, a category in which McIlroy has had no trouble this week.     

“If I can do that and just see a couple [putts] go in,” he said, “then hopefully it’s a different story.”

Maybe with another fairytale ending.