It wasn’t that Rory McIlroy played badly. Nor did he putt badly. McIlroy, in fact, did next to nothing wrong.
Not a dropped shot in 18 holes. A round of 70 to go with three in the 60s. It is hard to remember when McIlroy last played as well as this in a major when it mattered. Probably when he was winning them.
Yet, somehow, it wasn’t enough. Somehow, a strategy that was executed as well as could have been expected given the enormous pressure of leading a St Andrews Open, left him just short. McIlroy hadn’t catered for the X factor, as delivered by Cameron Smith.
Slow and steady didn’t win this race. McIlroy played an admirably controlled game, brought just the sort of calm, resilient performance every professional agrees will close out a major on day four, and was then blown off course by Smith’s whirlwind of back nine birdies.
Rory McIlroy would have been the ‘ideal’ Open winner for the year of the breakaway LIV tour
There were five in succession, holes 10 to 14, just at the time McIlroy will have felt his job done. Beat Viktor Hovland in their head-to-head duel, and the prize would be his. The pair led the field by four shots walking to the first tee. And McIlroy left Hovland in his wake. Yet the danger, it transpired, was ahead.
The Camerons, Smith and Young, played with the advantage of not leading the Open. They weren’t exactly under the radar, but they were a blip on its outer field.
Smith took the lead after 68 holes and never relinquished it, Young eagled the 18th to finish a shot behind him and, in that moment, demote McIlroy to third place. In a two-horse race, as the terrace chant goes.
As McIlroy marched up the last, the champion was already long gone, signing for 64. What was supposed to be a duel had been invaded by a third party. McIlroy really couldn’t have done much more. Sink more 12 or 15 foot putts? Yes, of course. Everyone needs to sink more 12 and 15 foot putts. Yet he would have imagined the score he shot on day four would win the Open. Indeed, he only recorded 70 because he was trying to eagle the last to force a play-off.
McIlroy has had some deceptive final day charges when already out of contention but this was the opposite. His score was a shot higher than it probably would have been, because he was trying for a miracle.
There were to be no miracles, sadly, not for him. He looked exhausted, tearful, coming off the 18th. Lose playing badly and it can be explained. Lose and play like this, with the crowd behind him too, and that is hard to take. If not now, when?
The 33-year-old left tearful and exhausted as he narrowly missed out on the championship
If not here, where? McIlroy’s putter went cold, true. But not so cold. He was close on so many occasions, two rolls short, or an inch or two wide. And these are the margins in golf. This the difference, as in all elite sport, between success and failure. This is why the LIV tour is an abomination, because its rewards come whether the putter’s warm or not.
And McIlroy would have been the perfect champion for the year of the breakaway. Not just because it is the 150th Open at the home of golf but because McIlroy has been the most outspoken critic of the Saudi-funded rebel tour, given that Tiger Woods barely plays now.
McIlroy is the champion of tradition, of history, of competition, of never taking the easy way out. Not that Smith is a deserter or dissenter, more that he isn’t as vocal about it as the Northern Irishman.
‘I think that the PGA Tour is the pinnacle of golf, and that’s where I want to be,’ Smith said earlier this year. ‘I want to be competing against the best guys in the world, and if they are playing over here, then I want to be playing against them.’
Cameron Smith snatched the 150th Open title by one stroke from Cameron Young in second
Of course, that leaves the door open for a time when the best players in the world are running from the PGA in droves but that time is not yet. So Smith is a worthy champion in more ways than one. He gets the politics right. And yesterday, his game was just sublime.
It helped perhaps, that he wasn’t shouldering the same burden as McIlroy until late in the day. But that still doesn’t explain his brilliant par save at the Road Hole 17th, or the assured way he shaved another shot off his score at the last. Without that, he would have been in a play-off with Young.
So what went wrong for McIlroy? Let’s just say that the greatest golf is when strokeplay becomes matchplay and that was the challenge confronting the leaders on Sunday.
Anyone with a passing feeling for the game will recall the duels, in the sun or otherwise. Jack Nicklaus versus Tom Watson, Nick Faldo versus Scott Hoch or Greg Norman, Henrik Stenson versus Phil Mickelson.
McIlroy finished third despite leading alongside Viktor Hovland at the end of Saturday’s play
Everything one player does affects his opponent and vice versa. Often, tournament leaders are separated by distance, the odd hole, maybe more. Inclement weather can sometimes have the leader battling an opponent now safely ensconced in the clubhouse. It is still a spectacle but not a completely fulfilling one.
This was going to be different and both men would have had to mentally prepare for that.
Yet when golf becomes a duel, it reveals its gladiatorial self. And McIlroy and Hovland spent so long swinging swords at each other, they barely noticed Smith had also entered the Colosseum ready to dismantle them both.
He didn’t have to worry about Hovland, McIlroy took care of the Norwegian, who blinked first with a bogey at four and never recovered, finishing tied fourth.
Yet, in doing this, McIlroy seemed to think it was all he needed to do. That he could play par, conservative golf and win the 150th Open, stately as a galleon, much like Nick Faldo at Muirfield in 1992.
Yet Smith was playing aggressive, brave, golf, that challenged this. He made five consecutive birdies on the back nine. He seized the lead from McIlroy at 19 under.
The Northern Irishman has persistently challenged the breakaway Saudi-backed LIV tour
Suddenly, McIlroy had to find a change of gear, a second strategy. Far from being his target, Hovland was an irrelevance. McIlroy had done the job laid out for him only to be confronted by one even greater. How to beat a man playing the golf of his life, a suddenly invisible enemy in the group ahead.
It is hard to be critical of McIlroy having failed this particular test. Other players are allowed excellence, too. Smith won the Players’ Championship, he is Australia’s No 1 — a genuine major was surely a matter of time. What is important now is how McIlroy recovers and responds.
After so much speculation that a fifth major was beyond him, to come so close is a crushing blow. He sounded low last night. He cannot be low for long. Golf needs McIlroy, and it needs McIlroy to play like this. Except not exactly like this. Just a fraction better. That would have been enough. Just a fraction.