McIlroy falls to bits as world No272 masters elements to put elite in shade

Dan Brown writes thrillers. His ­namesake is a golfer from north Yorkshire whose first chapter at the Open was more like a fantasy or romance. Rory McIlroy, the world No 2, had hoped for a happy ending after the ­golfing noir of his US Open implosion, but he ended up some 13 shots adrift of the world No 272. Sometimes fact trumps fiction.
The 29-year-old qualifier from Northallerton has missed the cuts in six of the past seven tournaments he has completed, but produced the round of his life to head the great, good and downtrodden by the close of a day that tested the ­creativity and resilience of all.
With only a solitary DP World Tour win on his CV, Brown looked far more at ease than scores of players blown from their comfort zones by the changeable wind at Royal Troon. It was damp and dismal in places and lots of celebrated names were left to commiserate with each other by the end. Brown, though, took his opportunity.
After the turn he rattled in a 35-foot putt. Buoyed by that, he made one from 41 feet on the next. He bisected fairways and it became a romp. On the last, with the clock ticking past 9.30pm, he had the chance to overhaul Shane Lowry and take the outright lead. He will never forget those seven feet. “It did get dark and it did get a little bit tricky,” he said. “But I felt good all day and it was just a case of running with it.”
He ran with it all the way to a bogey-free six-under-par round of 65, one ahead of Lowry with Justin Thomas another two shots adrift. Seven players, including Justin Rose, Xander ­Schauffele and Joe Dean, are another shot back.
Dean was a part-time supermarket delivery driver at the start of the year, but three back-nine birdies ­constituted a rare delivery and a ­personal triumph. Only 17 men finished under par. ­Ominously for all, they ­included ­Scottie Scheffler, the world No 1, as well as fellow major winners and gilded ­grinders Brooks Koepka and Matt ­Fitzpatrick.
Brown deserved daylight over them all after his ability to turn the fading light into limelight, but this was a great round for Lowry, too.
When he won the Open at Royal ­Portrush, he enjoyed a fine first day in the gloom while ­McIlroy’s opening shot at his heavily hyped homecoming sailed out of bounds and damaged a fan’s mobile phone. Five years on it was a similar story as the hirsute Irishman set the pace and cracks appeared in McIlroy’s challenge.
Back in 2019, Lowry’s emotional ­triumph was hailed by Graeme McDowell as the exclamation mark after the dream. Question marks ­remain, of course, as these are early days, but his five-under round meant the gap to McIlroy was as wide as the Firth of Clyde.
This Open has been preceded by lots of proxy psychoanalysis about how McIlroy might respond after last month’s US Open collapse. In the days after his mind-jumbling finish, he ­walked the High Line, an elevated trail on a disused railway in Manhattan. He was soul-searching in ­similar ­surroundings again when his ball sailed to the wrong side of the tracks next to the 11th and out of bounds. As he winced and sighed, the 32 days of ­questioning about whether he could ­recover from his horrible anticlimax to win the Open had an answer. That train appears to have left the ­station ahead of schedule.
McIlroy had come to grief on two of Troon’s most celebrated holes. The 11th is named “The Railway” and no less a sage than Jack Nicklaus dubbed it the hardest he had played in championship golf. McIlroy may have echoed the ­sentiment after a double bogey and he had dropped five shots in four holes by that staging post.
The trouble started on the 8th, the 123-yard Postage Stamp that has been ensnaring players for generations. Having found the sand, his ball briefly escaped, only to roll back into the trap. Another double.
Min Woo Lee, the Australian player, summarised the ­situation best when he spoke of his sympathy for the man tasked with raking the bunkers around the 8th.
“I feel bad for the fella,” he said. “His arms are about to fall off.”
The 11th also played its part in a day that turned into a long and windy road. There was a marshal asking for quiet as Patrick Cantlay teed off only for the 5.30 to whistle past. Then there was ­Tiger Woods hitting the buffers and scrambling in the bushes after going way right.
Woods, 48, delighted adoring fans with a delicious birdie on the 3rd, but it quickly got worse. An enduring star turn and a bucket-list draw for punters, he is still capable of magic moments but stuttered to a round of 79 and seems ­incapable of the momentum that used to turn crowds into campaign rallies.
If McIlroy faltered, there was one successful comeback. Thomas has ­suffered in recent times and the fickleness of form was highlighted by the comparison with a year ago when the American had been 14 shots worse in the first round at Hoylake.
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Lowry, though, has the perfect game for damp, dreary days like these. He single-handedly lifted the gloom in ­Portrush and his affection for links meant he was never going to shy away from the challenge. He has performed well enough at majors since his 2019 ­zenith to provoke optimism and his putting added the gloss. When you start making pars from nearly 25 feet it is probably going to be your day.
Another satisfied customer was Bob MacIntyre, who is quietly having the time of his life after his win at the ­Scottish Open last weekend.
A birdie on the last tweaked his post-round assessment and he is clearly up for more of this. “I’m a West Coast ­Scotland boy,” he said, lest anyone ­mistake this for California.
“This is the weather you can expect. I’ve actually been surprised it’s been as dry as it has.”
Rory McIlroy had hopes of burying the ghosts of last month’s American meltdown as the Open got under way, but only endured more suffering as the unsung English qualifier Dan Brown set the pace at Royal Troon (Rick Broadbent writes).
Brown, the world No272, drained a birdie on the 18th green to move one shot clear of Shane Lowry. His bogey-free round of 65 was all the more remarkable for finishing so late in fading light at 9.30pm and he faced a quick turnaround before his tee time today of 11.04am. “I’ve seen a few clips on the TV and it’s way darker than what it shows on the telly,” the Yorkshireman said. “I was struggling on them last few holes to see the slopes on the green so it was hard to read putts. I was looking at leaderboards, but I wasn’t thinking too much about where I was. I just wanted to try to catch Shane.”
Asked how he would cope with the excitement of setting the pace in his first major, he said: “I don’t think I’ll struggle to sleep tonight after that late finish.”
McIlroy, the world No 2, who squandered a golden chance to win his first major for a decade at the US Open, ­finished 13 shots behind Brown after a seven-over-par round of 78.
Asked if he was already too far back to stage a dramatic recovery, McIlroy winced and paused before saying: “I mean, all I need to focus on is tomorrow and trying to make the cut.”
McIlroy, 35, denied that his poor score had anything to do with scar tissue from Pinehurst and it was simply a case of Troon providing a more daunting test than last week’s Scottish Open, where he played well.
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“I just think your misses get punished a lot more than last week, even, jeez, any week. The lies were pretty nasty [with] the balls I hit in the rough. I was actually surprised how difficult I felt the back nine played. The course was playing tough. The conditions are very difficult in a wind that we haven’t seen so far this week.”
Lowry, the 2019 champion, was the antithesis of that gloom. “I holed a putt to go into the lead and I thought, ‘It’s the first time I’ve led the Open in five years.’ I love this tournament and would dearly love to give myself a chance to win it again.” The 37-year-also said he had to keep calm as the crowd grew boisterous before departing by the time Brown went down the 18th: “They were quite excitable out there and it felt more like the weekend. I just kind of stayed in my lane and hit some good shots.”
Plenty of big names struggled. Bryson DeChambeau, the man who pipped McIlroy to the US Open, made an eagle but was still five over par. So was the much fancied Tommy Fleetwood. Tiger Woods was eight over with Cameron Smith, the 2022 champion. “I didn’t do a whole lot of things right,” Woods said.