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Irish Examiner
16 hours ago
- Sport
- Irish Examiner
Raging McIlroy finds late magic to make cut as Oakmont leaves Lowry at low ebb
With the skies about to open above him, Rory McIlroy pulled himself out of the hellish challenge that has been Oakmont these past 48 hours and fired a heavenly closing birdie to make the cut on Friday night. Standing on the 18th tee at 7-over for the year's third major, the cutline moving up and down between +6 and +7, McIlroy knew only a birdie could guarantee his run of six-straight US Open cuts made. With playing partners Shane Lowry and Justin Rose having long since succumbed to the horrors of the Pittsburgh course, his was the only fate to be decided. After a post-Masters run that has defied expectations and, at times, belief, McIlroy found a little bit of vintage magic. How badly he needed it. American Sam Burns had set the pace with a morning 65 which got all the more impressive as Friday progressed in Western Pennsylvania. By nightfall Burns was the outright halfway leader at 3-under, one of just three of the 156 in the field to remain under par. Overnight leader JJ Spaun did his best to cling in there but otherwise those who began in the red felt the creep of the black. Big names joined Lowry and Rose in falling by the wayside too, defending champion Bryson DeChambeau and Ludvig Aberg among them. From start to finish there were crooked scores everywhere and the organisers even found time in the darkening hours for an absurd weather delay which meant a handful of misfortunates have to return on Saturday morning, when rough weather is expected to play a major factor throughout the third round. Friday at Oakmont featured plenty of Irish carnage as Lowry leaned into another expletive-laced reaction to major struggles then picked up an inexplicable penalty stroke while McIlroy tossed a club down the fairway on one hole and later smashed a tee marker for good measure. Birdie for the weekend 🐦@McIlroyRory converts to make it inside the projected cutline @ — PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) June 13, 2025 However on his pivotal final hole of the round the Holywood man composed himself to find his best tee-to-cup performance since his third hole the previous day. A perfect drive set him up for his most sparkling wedge of the week finding the last fraction of a degree of undulation to bring the ball back to just four feet. He rolled in the birdie for a 2-over 72 that in the circumstances may be his best round since Augusta. That's probably an overstatement or a bias towards how he finished it. Because it started in spectacularly hideous fashion, a calamitous double bogey on the first added to with another on the third to push him to 8-over overall and well outside the cut line. From there it was slow progress, in terms of both moment and plain ol actual progress, the pace of play disgracefully slow. He birdied the 9th to turn in brighter form but gave one back on the 11th and laboured a little until another arrived at the 15th. Shane Lowry won't be hanging around and won't be eager to ever discuss his visit to Pittsburgh this time around. A 54-hole leader here in 2016, this was a sequel which proved to be a box office bomb. The Offaly man left with a two-round card that by his high standards looked nothing short of diabolical. He followed up his Thursday 79 with an 8-over 78 to leave the grounds with an ugly +17 to the right of his name on the leaderboard. Below him were just 16 players, a grouping which you wouldn't describe as a golfing who's who but a who's he? Where to start with Lowry's fiendish Friday? How about the fact that on the 14th green he bent to mark his ball and pick it up but forgot to do the first bit. The vision of the slow dawning of what he'd just done, as he stood with ball in hand and marker in pocket was a vision of what the place can do to the best in the game. Lowry so rarely looked like a member of the elite unfortunately. Of all the places to need a fast start, Oakmont may be the last you'd pick. Looking for birdies, Lowry found an opening bogey on the confiding 1st and followed it with a double and two more bogeys before he stepped on to the 5th. He was +14 and wanted to be anywhere else. There was a throwback to his misery at Quail Hollow when he repeated his 'f*** this place' line after that third bogey. His only birdie of the week arrived so late it felt early, on the par-4 7th but there was further woe on the way home, bogeys on 10, the brain fart on 14 and one last bogey on 15. As he congratulated McIlroy for making the cut, Lowry joked and laughed with his friend. 'Rather you than me,' may have been the gist of it. Lowry spoke to the Examiner last week about how hard he has found recent weeks with his wife and children already back in Ireland for the summer. He has one more event before he heads home for six weeks but as he prepares for a weighty return to the Open at Portrush, there can be no hiding the need for work. Lowry's 2025 major season reads as follows: a closing 81 at Augusta to plummet down the field, a missed cut at Quail Hollow and a tie for 138th at an Oakmont course where he was widely expected to contend. Not great. For McIlroy, a wholly unpredictable weekend awaits. As afternoon scores spiked and big names tumbled, some made the point that Scottie Scheffler may have sat at 4-over but in a tie for 23rd, just seven back with only three major wins between him and the lead. McIlroy is just two further back on the course which offers up the least predictability in golf.
Irish Independent
4 days ago
- Sport
- Irish Independent
Rory McIlroy admits he must forget Masters elation as he faces US Open ‘brute'
The world number two arrives at fearsome Oakmont Country Club looking to get back on track after a combination of driver woes and post-Masters elation led to a poor showing in the PGA Championship and a missed cut in last week's Canadian Open. He readily admits he has no clue yet what goals to set for his post-Grand Slam career, but he knows he must be 100 per cent focused and forget about Augusta if he's to have any chance in Pittsburgh. "If I can't allow myself a little bit of a grace period (after winning the Masters), then why do we do these things?" McIlroy wondered aloud. Forgetting the Masters is easier said than done, but he sees that as key to righting the ship and competing for the rest of 2025. "I think it's trying to have a little bit of amnesia and forget about what happened six weeks ago," he said. "Then just trying to find the motivation to go back out there and work as hard as I've been working. "I worked incredibly hard on my game from October last year all the way up until April this year. It was nice to sort of see the fruits of my labour come to fruition and have everything happen. "But at the same time, you have to enjoy that. You have to enjoy what you've just accomplished. I certainly feel like I'm still doing that, and I will continue to do that. "At some point, you have to realise that there's a little bit more golf left to play this season, here, Portrush, Ryder Cup, so those are obviously the three big things that I'm sort of looking at for the rest of the year." McIlroy's last two starts have helped him come back down to earth, and with Oakmont a relentless beast, he knows he must be at his best mentally to survive. "Look, it's Oakmont… it's still a big brute of a golf course, and you're going to have to have your wits about you this week all the way throughout the bag, off the tee, into the greens, around the greens," he said. ADVERTISEMENT Learn more Heavy rain last weekend means the course is not quite the brute it was when he had to birdie the last two holes just to shoot 81 in a practice round last week. "It's very penal if you miss," he said. "Sometimes it's penal if you don't miss. But the person with the most patience and the best attitude this week is the one that's going to win." He added: "Last Monday felt impossible. I birdied the last two holes for 81. It felt pretty good. It didn't feel like I played that bad. "This morning, it was a little softer. The pins aren't going to be on three or four per cent slopes all the time. If you put it in the fairway, it's certainly playable. "But then you just have to think about leaving your ball below the hole and just trying to make as many pars as you can. You get yourself in the way of a few birdies; that's a bonus." After hitting a driver to 10 feet at the 301-yard, par-four 17th, he's clearly close to where he wants to be in the driver department after a weekend spent testing. As to what he learned, he quipped: "I learned that I wasn't using the right driver." Despite all that, it remains to be seen if he can truly put his Masters win aside and compete. Asked about his five-year plan, he said: "I don't have one. I have no idea. I'm sort of just taking it tournament by tournament at this point. Yeah, I have no idea. "Look, you dream about the final putt going in at the Masters, but you don't think about what comes next. "I think I've always been a player that struggles to play after a big event after I win whatever tournament. "I always struggle to show up with motivation the next week because you've just accomplished something and you want to enjoy it and you want to relish the fact that you've achieved a goal. "I think chasing a certain goal for the better part of a decade-and-a-half, I think I'm allowed a little bit of time to relax a little bit. But here at Oakmont, I certainly can't relax this week." Yes, he has unfinished US Open business, but he can't let that cloud his thinking. "I obviously want to play well here," he said. "I didn't like what happened last year. I didn't like what happened in LACC. And I feel like I'm playing US Open venues much better at this point in my career than I ever have. "So I don't want to go in there and feel like I want revenge. I just want to go out and play my golf. If I can do that, hit the shots and stay patient, hopefully I'll be in there on Sunday."
Irish Examiner
4 days ago
- Sport
- Irish Examiner
Rory McIlroy: 'I'm in a better place with everything going into this week'
Rory McIlroy is hoping little amnesia and some urgent retooling off the tee can aid his attempts to tame the 'nearly impossible' challenge of Oakmont this week. The 2011 US Open champion was up early on Tuesday morning to play nine holes of practice alongside close friend Shane Lowry at the Pittsburgh course. It went a whole lot better than a scouting trip the previous week. McIlroy revealed that in spite of a pair of closing birdies last Monday he shot an 81 on a course which many see as the sternest test American golf can pose, particularly with its ultra-punishing rough this week. Given that he followed that ugly score with a pretty disastrous weekend at the RBC Canadian Open, his post-Masters glow fading in rapid quick time, one would be forgiven for expecting McIlroy to be battling a slew of concerns at the year's third major. His pre-tournament press conference did admittedly feature fresh moments of reflection on how adjusting to life after completing the career grand slam has been a struggle. However McIlroy said last weekend's unexpected time off had helped him figure out one big piece of the puzzle. Having quickly returned to Florida from Toronto, McIlroy was asked what he had learned at home? 'I learned that I wasn't using the right driver,' he replied to laughter. During Tuesday's practice on the back nine alongside Lowry, McIlroy was carrying a TaylorMade Qi10 driver. That was the model he swung to success at the Masters only to see his favoured one fail a compliance test prior to the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow. Since then things have been far from reliable as he cycled between replacements and the Qi35 model which let him down in Canada. 'Every driver sort of has its own character and you're trying to manage the misses,' McIlroy said. 'I feel like, as the last few weeks go, I learnt a lot on Thursday and Friday last week and did a good bit of practice at home and feel like I'm in a better place with everything going into this week.' Asked how big an impact it had made at Quail Hollow not to have his 'gamer' driver, McIlroy pointed to the eventual winner, replying: 'it wasn't a big deal for Scottie, so it shouldn't have been a big deal for me.' The 36-year-old argued that throughout his career he has always been slow to refocus after big victories. April's crowning moment in Georgia was the biggest yet so it perhaps makes a certain amount of sense that this has been an extended run of readjustment. Ignoring what's gone before may be the approach this week. 'I think it's trying to have a little bit of amnesia and forget about what happened six weeks ago. Then just trying to find the motivation to go back out there and work as hard as I've been working. "I worked incredibly hard on my game from October last year all the way up until April this year. It was nice to sort of see the fruits of my labor come to fruition and have everything happen,' he said. 'You have to enjoy that. You have to enjoy what you've just accomplished. At some point, you have to realize that there's a little bit more golf left to play this season, here, Portrush, Ryder Cup, so those are obviously the three big things that I'm sort of looking at for the rest of the year.' TAKING AIM: Rory McIlroy takes it down the last in his practice round ahead of the 125th US Open at Oakmont Country. Pic:McIlroy's last visit to Oakmont was the spark of a run of three-straight missed cuts at the US Open. Since then he has six top-10s in a row with back-to-back second-place finishes in the two most recent. He said the event "went from probably my least favorite major to probably my favorite because of what it asks from you, and I love that challenge.' But his scouting trip last week proved a little too challenging. The curated calf-deep rough at Oakmont swallowed up some practice balls. At least this week there are volunteers on hand to help with the search. "I'm glad we have spotters up there because I played last Monday and you hit a ball off the fairway and you were looking for a good couple of minutes just to find it. It's very penal if you miss. Sometimes it's penal if you don't miss. But the person with the most patience and the best attitude this week is the one that's going to win,' he said, grateful for the early soaking the course has got this week. 'There's definitely been a little bit of rain since that Monday. Last Monday felt impossible. I birdied the last two holes for 81. It felt pretty good. It didn't feel like I played that bad. It's much more benign right now than it was that Monday. They had the pins in dicey locations, and greens were running at 15 1/2. It was nearly impossible. 'But yeah, this morning it felt -- it was a little softer. If you put it in the fairway, it's certainly playable. You get yourself in the way of a few birdies, that's a bonus.' McIlroy revealed that he also spent parts of the weekend away from the range, hitting the court with caddie Harry Diamond. Intense tennis matches are exactly the kind of thing he would have avoided pre-Augusta. 'I'm trying to have more fun. We're trying to take more trips,' he said. "We're trying to do things that I enjoy and get back to having hobbies and filling my time with the things that I want to do. But that hasn't just been post-Augusta. I've been trying to do that for a while. 'I've started to play a lot of tennis again. Like Harry and Niall play tennis pretty much every week when we're on the road, and I've always been like, I don't want to injure myself, whatever, but I miss not playing. "So Harry and I played quite a bit of tennis last weekend, so that was good fun.'
Scottish Sun
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
‘I've tried not to watch' – Rory McIlroy fights back tears over ‘once-in-a-lifetime' moment ahead of USPGA
McIlroy has opened up on his next career targets TEAR WE GO 'I've tried not to watch' – Rory McIlroy fights back tears over 'once-in-a-lifetime' moment ahead of USPGA RORY MCILROY still has to fight back tears every time he watches the dramatic conclusion to his quest for golf's Grand Slam. Even though McIlroy's Masters triumph was almost a month ago, the emotions that saw him collapse to his knees and burst into tears are still just as powerful now. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 2 Rory McIlroy has opened up on his amazing Masters success Credit: Getty 2 McIlroy, 36, won the Masters last month Credit: Sportsfile Going back to Northern Ireland to celebrate with his parents took things to a new level, with McIlroy revealing that he and mum Rosie were 'an absolute mess' as they shared a tear-soaked hug. And it looked as if he might burst into tears again as he reflected on his play-off victory over Justin Rose before beginning his bid for Major No 6 at the USPGA today. McIlroy commented: 'I've tried not to watch the TV footage too much because I want to remember the feelings I had at that moment, just what it meant to me once the final putt dropped. 'When I re-watch a lot of things back, I tend to remember the visuals of the TV, rather than what I was feeling and what I was seeing through my own eyes. So I've tried to avoid that a bit. 'But any time I have seen it on TV, I well up again. I still feel like I want to cry. My reaction was just an involuntary thing, I've never felt a release like that before, and I might never feel a release like that again. 'That could be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and it was a very cool moment.' McIlroy, 36, said finally completing the career Grand Slam means he has achieved everything he dreamed of when he started playing the game. He insisted there will be plenty more career highlights to come. But he is not going to heap more pressure on himself by setting grand new goals. CASINO SPECIAL - BEST CASINO BONUSES FROM £10 DEPOSITS Taking time to reflect on the Masters victory that made him only the sixth golfer to win all four Majors, in addition to spending 122 weeks as the world No 1, has brought a huge sense of fulfilment. McIlroy explained: 'I have achieved everything that I've wanted to in the game. Rory McIlroy reacts to Bryson DeChambeau's post-Masters comments ahead of PGA Championship 'I dreamed as a child of becoming the best player in the world and winning all the Majors. I've done that. Everything beyond this, for however long I decide to play the game competitively, is a bonus. 'I can tell you that achieving the dream of a lifetime is everything I thought it would be. And the outpouring of support and congratulatory messages since Augusta has been absolutely amazing. 'Look, everyone needs to have goals and dreams, and I've been able to do something that I dreamed of for a long time. 'I'm still going to set myself goals. I'm still going to try to achieve certain things. But I sit here knowing that that very well could be the highlight of my career. And that's a very cool thing. 'I want to still create a lot of other highlights and high points, but I'm not sure if any other win will live up to what happened a few weeks ago.' McIlroy has previously talked about trying to become the first player to win all four Majors in the same year - or to chase down Harry Vardon's record of seven Major victories, and Gary Player's haul of nine, the next by a non-American golfer. But he added: 'I think everyone saw how hard having a north star is to pursue, and how much it meant being able to get over the line. 'I've talked in the past about trying to become the best European ever or the best international player. But I feel like I sort of burdened myself with the Career Grand Slam stuff, and I want to enjoy this. 'I want to enjoy what I've achieved, and I want to enjoy the last decade or whatever of my career, and I don't want to burden myself again with numbers or statistics. 'I've always said I won't put a number on how many Majors I want to finish with. I just want to go and try to play the best golf I can, because if I do that I know I'll give myself more chances.'
The Irish Sun
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
‘I've tried not to watch' – Rory McIlroy fights back tears over ‘once-in-a-lifetime' moment ahead of USPGA
RORY MCILROY still has to fight back tears every time he watches the dramatic conclusion to his quest for golf's Grand Slam. Even though Advertisement 2 Rory McIlroy has opened up on his amazing Masters success Credit: Getty 2 McIlroy, 36, won the Masters last month Credit: Sportsfile Going back to Northern Ireland to celebrate with his parents took things to a new level, with McIlroy revealing that he and mum Rosie were 'an absolute mess' as they shared a tear-soaked hug. And it looked as if he might burst into tears again as he reflected on his play-off victory over 'When I re-watch a lot of things back, I tend to remember the visuals of the TV, rather than what I was feeling and what I was seeing through my own eyes. So I've tried to avoid that a bit. Advertisement READ MORE IN GOLF 'But any time I have seen it on TV, I well up again. I still feel like I want to cry. My reaction was just an involuntary thing, I've never felt a release like that before, and I might never feel a release like that again. 'That could be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and it was a very cool moment.' McIlroy, 36, said finally completing the career Grand Slam means he has achieved everything he dreamed of when he started playing the game. He insisted there will be plenty more career highlights to come. But he is not going to heap more pressure on himself by setting grand new goals. Advertisement Most read in Golf CASINO SPECIAL - BEST CASINO BONUSES FROM £10 DEPOSITS Taking time to reflect on the Masters victory that made him only the sixth golfer to win all four Majors, in addition to spending 122 weeks as the world No 1, has brought a huge sense of fulfilment. McIlroy explained: 'I have achieved everything that I've wanted to in the game. Rory McIlroy reacts to Bryson DeChambeau's post-Masters comments ahead of PGA Championship 'I dreamed as a child of becoming the best player in the world and winning all the Majors. I've done that. Everything beyond this, for however long I decide to play the game competitively, is a bonus. Advertisement 'I can tell you that achieving the dream of a lifetime is everything I thought it would be. And the outpouring of support and congratulatory messages since Augusta has been absolutely amazing. 'Look, everyone needs to have goals and dreams, and I've been able to do something that I dreamed of for a long time. 'I'm still going to set myself goals. I'm still going to try to achieve certain things. But I sit here knowing that that very well could be the highlight of my career. And that's a very cool thing. 'I want to still create a lot of other highlights and high points, but I'm not sure if any other win will live up to what happened a few weeks ago.' Advertisement McIlroy has previously talked about trying to become the first player to win all four Majors in the same year - or to chase down Harry Vardon's record of seven Major victories, and Gary Player's haul of nine, the next by a non-American golfer. But he added: 'I think everyone saw how hard having a north star is to pursue, and how much it meant being able to get over the line. 'I've talked in the past about trying to become the best European ever or the best international player. But I feel like I sort of burdened myself with the Career Grand Slam stuff, and I want to enjoy this. 'I want to enjoy what I've achieved, and I want to enjoy the last decade or whatever of my career, and I don't want to burden myself again with numbers or statistics. Advertisement 'I've always said I won't put a number on how many Majors I want to finish with. I just want to go and try to play the best golf I can, because if I do that I know I'll give myself more chances.'
