The PGA Tour resumes at the Travelers Championship on Thursday without the two big stars of the thrilling US Open.
Winner Bryson DeChambeau will tee up as two-time Major champion at LIV Nashville on Friday. And runner-up Rory McIlroy will continue to recover from the “toughest day as a professional golfer” away from the game with his family after his late collapse at Pinehurst.
The Ulsterman missed short putts on 16 and 18 to lose by a shot and Sir Nick Faldo claimed on Sky Sports: “That’s going to haunt Rory for the rest of his life, those two misses.”
We will see the immediate impact when the world No.2 returns to action to defend his title at the Genesis Scottish Open next month before teeing up at the Open at Royal Troon.
McIlroy has won four Majors but has had more near misses over the years. The most famous was at the 2011 Masters where he took a four-shot lead onto the final round before shooting a painful 80. Two months later, he won the US Open by eight shots.
He was then 22. He is now 35 with years of scar tissue on his losses. LIV Golf initially seemed to inspire him but he admitted last June he felt like a “sacrificial lamb” for his outspokenness before the PGA Tour announced the “framework agreement” with the Saudis.
McIlroy shared the lead going into the final round of the 2022 Open at St Andrews and then came up short again at last year’s US Open.
Seeking to change his approach to his latest bid to win the Masters in April, the Ulsterman kept his pre-tournament press conference to 10 minutes – and then missed the cut.
He claimed the “stars are aligning” before the US PGA in Valhalla after winning the previous two events just like when he won at the Kentucky venue in 2014. McIlroy then filed divorce papers on the Monday before the Major and played like he didn’t want to be there. He somehow found another way to mess up a big chance.
The Ryder Cup star reconciled with his wife Erica before Pinehurst but the heartache was not over. He played less passively than in his final rounds at St Andrews and Los Angeles but still could not close the deal. He is now 0-37 in Majors over the last decade.
So what does he do now? He visited swing guru Butch Harmon before the Masters – he had previously worked with Pete Cowen – but he still has his childhood coach Michael Bannon while his agent Sean O’Flaherty and his caddie Harry Diamond are old friends.
It started to go wrong with a bogey at the par-3 15th hole when McIlroy’s tee shot did not hold the green. Tiger Woods’ former coach Hank Haney claimed on X: “I will say this, if Steve Williams was Rory’s caddie I can promise you he would have never hit a perfect flighted 7 iron that rolled over the green on 15 into a terrible lie because he would have hit an 8 iron and sent it straight up in the air and held the green.”
McIlroy is fiercely loyal to his inner circle. But Albert Einstein claimed: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Maybe he just needs one more chance to win a Major. He certainly thinks so.
McIlroy ended his statement on social media on Tuesday by insisting: “As I said at the start of the tournament, I feel closer to winning my next major championship than I ever have. The one word that I would describe my career as is resilient. I’ve shown my resilience over and over again in the last 17 years and I will again.”
