Rory McIlroy told his major drought may never end after Open horror show
Rory McIlroy has a battle on his hands just to make the cut at The Open Championship on Friday and he has been told by Sir Nick Faldo that his 10-year major drought could last forever
Sir Nick Faldo has poured doubt on Rory McIlroy's chances of winning another major after his dismal start to The Open Championship at Royal Troon on Thursday.
McIlroy's chances of lifting the Claret Jug on Sunday are all but over after he carded a seven-over-par opening round on the Ayrshire coast, leaving him languishing in 126th place and facing an uphill battle to make the cut.
Thursday's performance marked a miserable return to the major stage for the Ulsterman one month on from his Pinehurst heartbreak, blowing a two-shot lead over the final four holes to prolong his 10-year wait to win a fifth major championship.
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Faldo, the most successful European golfer of all time with six major wins, says with each passing tournament, he is increasingly unsure that McIlroy, 35, will taste major glory again.
"I would love him to but it is a big but now," Faldo told BBC Radio 4. "It really is a big but. People say flick a switch and go and make it happen. It is just not that easy, is it? You lose your trust, a bit of self-belief and that doubt creeps in some small percentage. And you can’t quite play how you used to play
"Rory is only 35, fit as a fiddle, strong, hitting the golf ball great but an awful lot of scar tissue and damage. And then of course he put himself in an unbelievable position at Pinehurst and then it all went wrong. Amazing how one putt from two feet on the 16th, you suddenly doubt yourself and you think ‘Oh my goodness’. You can see how his mind got scrambled.
"That unfortunately is another moment where he was so close, like St Andrews. He was leading by, what, three? Had a great putt over on the ninth, missed it and of course, Cam Smith goes birdie-birdie. And then all of a sudden he could have been four ahead and you are only one. Little things like that.
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"On the technical side, as we know with his short game, anything from a 9-iron in, he doesn’t trust it 100 per cent. He knows occasionally he pulls some left and then you guard against that. It is a brutal game between their ears."
McIlroy wore a pained expression as he faced the media in the immediate aftermath of Thursday's opening round, knowing that his realistic hopes of contending for the win this week were over.
"Difficult day," he said. "I felt like I did okay for the first part of the round and then missed the green at the Postage Stamp there and left it in and made a double.
"But still, felt like I was in reasonable enough shape being a couple over through 9, thinking that I could maybe get those couple shots back, try to shoot even par, something like that.
Then hitting the ball out of bounds on 11, making a double there. Even though the wind on the back nine was helping, it was a lot off the left. I was actually surprised how difficult I felt like the back nine played. I thought we were going to get it a little bit easier than we did.
"The course was playing tough. The conditions are very difficult in a wind that we haven't seen so far this week. I guess when that happens, you play your practice rounds, you have a strategy that you think is going to help you get around the golf course, but then when you get a wind you haven't played in, it starts to present different options and you start to think about maybe hitting a few clubs that you haven't hit in practice. Yeah, just one of those days where I just didn't adapt well enough to the conditions."
McIlroy will need to navigate Troon under par in his second round, which begins at 3.10pm. The Northern Irisman will play alongside Tyrrell Hatton (+2) and Max Homa (+5).
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