Rory McIlroy’s Misses Not Getting Smaller, but Silver Lining is on the Horizon

Rory McIlroy’s Misses Not Getting Smaller, but Silver Lining is on the Horizon
McIlroy Shoots His Worse Opening-round Score on the PGA Tour at the Memorial











Chris Chaney May 30, 2013 9:43 PM

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Rory McIlroy watches a shot during the first round at the Memorial Tournament. (Getty Images)




COMMENTARY | Golf is not a game of perfect; golf is a game of misses and for Rory McIlroy in 2013, those misses have simply been too costly.

"My misses this year have been too wide," McIlroy said the Wednesday before the Memorial when asked wha
t's the reason he hasn't won yet this season. "Last year if I missed a fairway or missed a shot, it wasn't by much. This year it seems the misses have been big and have cost me… Sometimes in golf it's not about how good your good shots are, it's about how much damage your bad shots do to you."



Those misses continued to plague McIlroy as he opened Jack Nicklaus' tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio with a 6-over par 78, his worst opening-round score on the PGA Tour.

"The game just isn't all there at the minute," McIlroy said following the round. "I'm pretty frustrated. I'm trying not to let it get to me. I don't have any explanations for it."

Here's an explanation for it: not only were McIlroy's misses with his woods and irons as equally off target, but they've crept onto the putting surface. McIlroy slapped it around the pristine and pure Muirfield greens 33 times on Thursday, including a four-putt on the 12th hole (his third of the day).

The usual suspects have come up in conversation about what's wrong with Rors: the new Nike clubs, the tennis-star girlfriend, the management company split. The excuses are as numerous and wild as the hairs on McIlroy's head.

Perhaps the biggest culprit of McIlroy's latest slump is that it's been too long since his last one, which came just about a year ago this month.

Ever the streaky player, McIlroy jettisoned off to a hot start in 2012 finishing in the top-3 (including a win at the Honda) in four of his first five tournaments of the season. Then things went a bit sideways. He missed the cut at the Players, then again at the Memorial. Two weeks later, he missed the cut at the US Open. And remember, at this point McIlroy was the top-ranked player in the world.

The same questions were brought up during that slump. Is he spending too much time with Caroline Wozniacki? Can he handle the pressures of being one of the most sought-after commodities in the sports world? Does he have the drive to be great or did success come too easily?

Then what did McIlroy do amid a cloud of doubt? Top-fived at the WGC-Bridgestone, won the PGA Championship by eight strokes, won two of the four FedEx Cup Playoff events and captured the money list titles on both the PGA and European Tours.

Gone were the doubts about his stability, his resiliency and his relationship status. We forgot about the drop off in May and June. Slump? What slump? This is the guy who's going to challenge Tiger Woods for the next 10 years, we said. We were certain of it.

Yet, here we are again, questioning what is going on with an admittedly streaky player.

"It feels like I'm waiting for that week where everything sort of clicks into place and I can get some momentum from that," McIlroy said later in that same Wednesday press conference. "A bit like last year where I got the top‑5 at Akron before the PGA and that gave me a little bit of momentum and I was able to kick on from there. I'm just waiting for one of those weeks."

It will be tough for this to be the week that everything clicks, especially given the hole he dug himself through one round.

However, with McIlroy, he is always one round away. One round away from knocking down every flagstick on the course with his irons and rolling in every putt he looks at.

So instead of trying to diagnose what's wrong with McIlroy, maybe we should just consider the player and his history. This isn't a new phenomenon; we have the scouting report on Rory: amazing highs with questionable lows, but all the talent in the world.

Right now, McIlroy is floundering in one of those lows, but his ascension back to the top of his game could come as soon as his next range session.

Chris Chaney is a Cincinnati, Ohio-based sportswriter. He has written for multiple outlets including WrongFairway.com, Hoopville.com, The Cincinnati (OH) Enquirer and The Clermont (OH) Sun.

Follow him on Twitter @Wrong_Fairway.