Rory McIlroy opens with 75 at Arnold Palmer Invitational
Rory McIlroy struggled in his opening round on Thursday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. From struggling with pulling his driver to finding a trio of water hazards, McIlroy was kind of lucky to walk away with 3-over 75 that has him nine shots behind leader Jason Day.
It all started when McIlroy made a double-bogey 6 on the opening hole when he pulled his drive onto the driving range at Bay Hill. Two holes later, McIlroy tugged his tee shot at the par-4 third into the water but did well after his drop to get up-and-down for par. And it just kept going like that.
After a day of seeing drive after drive hug the left side of the course, McIlroy declared he had a case of the Lefts.
“It’s funny. I started missing it left off the tee, and I haven’t been doing that at all over the recent weeks, or even last week in practice, or even in the pro-am yesterday,” he said. “I hadn’t really been missing anything left. [When I] missed one left like that at the start, I thought it was just a bad swing, so I didn’t think anything of it. And then I hit one left on three, hit one left on four, missed a few left.”
On the eighth hole, it wasn’t a tug that got McIlroy into trouble. Rather, he left his second shot 15 yards short of his uphill target, ending up in a water hazard. He made a second double bogey on the side.
Eight holes later, McIlroy found the water for a third time with his second shot from a hanging lie to the par-5 16th.
“I haven’t hit a shot like that in a long time,” McIlroy added.
Again, however, he got up-and-down from 77 yards for a par save.
The 75 ties McIlroy’s high PGA Tour round of the young season, matching the final-round score he shot at Riviera to fall out of contention at the Northern Trust Open. It’s also the sixth time in his last eight PGA Tour rounds that McIlroy has shot in the 70s, including in the first round of each of his last three events.
At The Honda Classic, McIlroy missed the cut after backing up an opening 72 with another.
At Doral, McIlroy turned around a Thursday 71 with a hot putter to shoot a Friday 65. He finished third when he played conservatively in the final round.
If McIlroy is to make the weekend — and he sits T-107 in a 120-player field — he’ll have turn on the aggressiveness and leave the Lefts on the range.
“It probably could have been a few worse,” McIlroy said. “So, to end up shooting this, if I get some good work done on the range tonight, and come back and play a good round of golf tomorrow, and get myself into the low, red numbers, at least I’ll be here for the weekend, and I can maybe make a charge.”
Ryan Ballengee is a Yahoo Sports contributor. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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