How excited was Rory McIlroy for the FedEx Cup playoffs to begin on Thursday?
Rory McIlroy catches FedEx Cup fever; opens with 74 at The Barclays
Rory McIlroy parties hardy ahead of The Barclays as lack of practice catches up with the world No. 1, who’s coming off three straight victories that include two major titles.
Hunter Martin
So tingly about the prospect of The Barclays — the first of four pressure-packed (heh) playoff games that kicked off on Thursday — was the world No. 1 that he worked his butt off hitting Jimmy Fallon in the face, dumping buckets of ice on Tiger Woods and a model/actor who could be the new future Mrs. Boy Wonder, and blitzing the media to shill for his equipment vendor’s new line of irons.
After such exhausting and exhaustive prep work, was anyone surprised that McIlroy stumbled out of the gate to an opening-round 3-over 74 at Ridgewood Country Club, his birdie on the last hole one of only two on a day that included more lowlights than highlights?
The Ice Bucket Challenge cooled Rory McIlroy down too much. Matches his highest opening rd of season (74) #kingofbouncebacks
— Kelly Tilghman (@KellyTilghmanGC) August 21, 2014 The man of the hour wasn’t.
"It's a big four weeks coming up. It's one of the only things that I haven't achieved in this game. It would be great to finish off my best year to date with a victory there."
“Fatigue isn’t playing a part,” said McIlroy, who was 3-over after four holes on his outward nine (he started on No. 10) after a double-bogey on the par-4 12th and a bogey 6 on 13. “It’s I think just not putting the time in that I probably should have over the past week and I think I allowed myself that and deserved that. But this is the sort of consequence of it and I need to work hard on this afternoon and go out tomorrow and shoot a good number.”
By the time the last putt dropped on Thursday afternoon, the winner of three straight events coming in was nine shots back of 18-hole leader Bo Van Pelt and in a nine-way tie for 102nd.
Sure, McIlroy said all the right things heading into the season-ending scrum that presents the winner with a lovely silver cup lined with 10 million George Washingtons.
“I want to finish the season well. I want to be up there in contention week‑in, week‑out. I feel like the season I had, it deserves a finish like that so I’m going to just grind out every week that I can,” he said after Wednesday’s pro-am. “It’s a big four weeks coming up. It’s one of the only things that I haven’t achieved in this game is winning the FedEx Cup. I came close in 2012. It would be great to finish off what has been my best year to date with a victory there.”
Seriously, though, anyone buying Rors’ exuberance for the relatively meaningless money grab that is the FedEx Cup series? If so, it’s difficult to align his pre-Barclays preparation, which involved partying in New York, forcing Ian Poulter out of Twitter retirement with his plaid-suited appearance at a Manchester United game in England, and then jet-setting back to Manhattan for the Tiger and Jimmy show and several Nike appearances, with his head-down effort to get ready for Valhalla.
Barclays 2014
McIlroy was so intent on winning the last major on the men’s 2014 schedule that after a relatively quick bit of merrymaking with friends, family, some Jaegermeister, and the claret jug, he was back in the gym the Wednesday after his Open Championship triumph.
The wire-to-wire victory at Hoylake was the start of a hat trick for McIlroy, who followed up with a W at Firestone before capturing the PGA and joining Woods and Jack Nicklaus as just the third player under 26 to win four majors.
“I wanted to enjoy it for a week,” he said. “Taking a week off and sort of getting back into it this week, I probably just needed to give myself a little bit more time, but I wasn’t going to do that. I was enjoying myself.”
The golfer Woods teasingly threatened to go all Tonya Harding on at Augusta in April was obviously off his game on Thursday, going out in 3-over and posting his worst score since the third round of the U.S. Open in June. The back nine was better, with McIlroy making his first birdie on the 14th and ending his off-kilter day by draining a 30-foot birdie putt on No. 9.
Not to worry, though, since McIlroy acknowledged that a drop off from his other-worldly play of late was “inevitable after such a great few weeks.”
The nine-time PGA Tour winner sits atop the playoff standings so he’s good to go for all four of the tourneys. He’ll just have to kick himself into gear if he hopes to hang around the Garden State for the weekend or he can get a head start on holiday traffic traveling up I-95 for the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston over Labor Day weekend.
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