The Rory McIlroy green-jacket victory tour is still humming along.
About six weeks after the reigning Masters champion returned to his homeland for the Open Championship in Portrush, Northern Ireland — where he was greeted like a triumphant Roman general coming home from war — McIlroy this week is enjoying more adoration about a three-hour drive south, at the K Club, the Dublin-area site of the Irish Open.
The K Club has special meaning to McIlroy. As a 17-year-old, he attended the Ryder Cup at the posh resort with his father Gerry, and watched Europe blow the doors off the Americans in a nine-point romp. A decade later, McIlroy returned to the K Club for the Irish Open and won by three, representing what still is his sole Irish Open title. After his opening-round one-under 71 Thursday, McIlroy returned some of the love to his flock, in a town-hall-style Q&A session with fans at which he wore the green jacket and sat next to replica trophies from the other three majors. Good vibes all around.
Well, almost all around.
That’s because McIlroy’s opening round didn’t exactly go to plan. The K Club crowds have been huge this week, and no surprise they were particularly swollen around McIlroy’s group; he went off the 10th tee at 1 p.m. local time with Thriston Lawrence of South Africa and Norway’s Kristoffer Reitan. Fans, reporters, camera crews, other assorted hangers-on. As is often the case with marquee groups, the scene was a bit of a circus, which led to a sluggish pace of play.
DP World Tour officials took note and — fairly or not — put McIlroy’s group on the clock “pretty early” in their round, McIlroy told reporters. “And then the first official went away and then we were put on the clock for the last three holes by another one.”
“I got frustrated the last few holes because I felt a bit rushed,” he said.
It showed. On the par-4 7th hole, McIlroy flew the green and made bogey. On the par-3 8th, long again, which led to another bogey. He closed with a par at the 9th to shoot 71, five off the early lead shared by three players.
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“I feel like it always happens,” McIlroy said of the pace warning, “and I don’t think they use sort of common sense in terms of, well, of course we’re going to lose ground because we’re going to have to wait on crowds and wait on the two camera crews that are out there. They should give us a little bit of leeway.”
As is the case on the PGA Tour, slow-play warnings on the DP World Tour are far more common than actual slow-play penalties. In an X debate about pace of play last year, David Howell, a former DP player who now is chairman of the tour’s Tournament Committee, wrote: “If you are ignorant enough to ignore all the slow play rules you can rack up a two-shot penalty this year on the DP World Tour. We do take slow play seriously.” He continued: “2 bad times in a week gets you a one-shot penalty, if 1 of those breaches was over 80 seconds for 1st to play or 70 secs if 2nd 2 play which is considered an EST (excessive shot time) then the 2 breaches would mean the player incurs a two-shot penalty. Unlikely but not impossible.”
McIlroy’s gripe is more nuanced, however, because he and his playing partners were dealing with a far more cluttered and chaotic environment than the rest of the field. Should allowances be made in these situations, or should officials at least look the other way? McIlroy seems to think so.
Of slow-play warnings, he said, “It’s happened to me quite a lot before in these sort of big groups when I come back to Europe and play, and I just let it agitate me. Any time I either come back to this tour or I play in some of those [world’s No.] 1, 2, 3 groups, we are always put on the clock for the same reason. It happened at the Players [in March], and I lost my s— with an official.”
McIlroy played in the first two rounds that week with world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and world No. 3 Xander Schauffele. McIlroy opened 67-68, then won the title after beating J.J. Spaun in a playoff.
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