If the Open Championship had come down to driving alone, Rory McIlroy might have walked away with his seventh career major title Sunday at Royal Birkdale Golf Club. But golf, of course, requires far more than a powerful tee shot.
McIlroy topped the field at The Open in strokes gained off the tee, posting an impressive 7.98, and led all competitors in driving distance with an average of 339.3 yards. Unfortunately for the Northern Ireland native, the rest of his game simply didn’t measure up.
His final-round 71 — one over par — left him at 1-under 279 for the tournament, a full nine shots behind New Zealand’s Ryan Fox, who claimed the championship.
“I just sort of stuck in neutral for most of the week,” McIlroy said following his round, which included three birdies and four bogeys. “Obviously shot a good one on Friday to get myself in for the weekend and back in it. Yeah, even par over the weekend is not going to get it done. Yeah, I just felt like any time I got a little bit of momentum out there, I seemed to make a bogey.”
McIlroy revealed that he had switched back to a heavier driver setup that he felt more comfortable with, a change that paid dividends off the tee.
“I went into it at — I think it was Memorial, maybe,” he said. “I started to use the heavier driver again. Then I think I led — might have led the field in driving in Shinnecock (at the U.S. Open). Certainly led it last week in Scotland, and I’m up there again this week.
“That’s a huge positive going forward, especially accuracy-wise. The length is the length, and I’m always going to have that, but just getting the ball in play a little bit more with the driver was a struggle at the start of the year, and I figured that out. It’s just trying to get the rest of the game to match up to it.”
Before diving back into serious practice, McIlroy said he plans to take some time off and go on holiday with his wife and daughter.
When he returns to competition, he’ll be splitting his schedule between the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup and events on the DP World Tour. He also mentioned looking ahead to the Irish Open, scheduled for mid-September.
“I’ve really enjoyed my stretches of golf in Europe and heading into — like going back to India again, the Middle East, Australia — really enjoyed that part of the year last year, and looking forward to that again, for sure,” McIlroy said.
Reflecting on the week at Royal Birkdale, McIlroy noted that the course felt noticeably different from when he finished tied for fourth there at The Open in 2017.
“I feel like with a lot of the changes they made, the greens were raised up and a lot of the fall-offs and stuff, it didn’t play like a traditional links course,” he said. “I didn’t feel like you could run the ball up to a lot of greens. There was a lot of stuff where you still had to fly the ball on.
“I’m not saying that’s the reason I didn’t play well this week, just it wasn’t — it didn’t feel like it was sort of your typical links test or certainly wasn’t the links test that Birkdale presented in 2017.”
