RORY IS IN WORST FORM SINCE HE TURNED PRO SIX YEARS AGO

FROM THE DAILY TELEGRAPH WEBSITE
By JONATHON LIEW AT MUIRFIELD

Out-of-sorts Rory McIlroy bowed out of the Open at Muirfield on Friday after another nightmare round of 75 left him marooned on 12-over par 154 - his worst 36-hole score in a major.

Rory McIlroy tossed away his putter and walked off the green with a void, faraway look in his eyes. Perhaps he was making plans for the weekend.

He absent-mindedly shook hands with his playing partners, Phil Mickelson and Hideki Matsuyama, and disappeared into the recorder’s hut to submit a scorecard so grisly it was practically bloodstained.

The grim numbers: 75 on Friday, 154 for the tournament, 12 over par. Home time.

This was his worst 36-hole score in a major, beating the 152 he carded at Pebble Beach in the US Open three years ago.

If he thought he had hit rock bottom in March when he walked away from the Honda Classic, or three weeks ago when he left the Irish Open with 13 clubs and two halves, then he was wrong.
 Since he turned professional six years ago, McIlroy has never been playing golf as badly as this.

At times during these dreadful two days, he has posed an interesting metaphysical question: how can a man simultaneously be there and yet so patently not there?
“Keep the faith, Rory,” one fan shouted on the 10th fairway. Normally McIlroy responds to such entreaties with a smile or a nod. This time, such was his fug of introspection that he heard nothing.
“Yeah, it was a bit like a sympathy out there,” he said with a smile. “Obviously they were willing me to play well. It’s disappointing not to be here for the weekend. It’s good to play in front of these crowds.”
For all the amateur psychology and quick fixes being peddled by the more seasoned voices in the game, the uniqueness of McIlroy defies easy diagnosis.
Such is his easy sense of humour, his evident bewilderment at the malaise afflicting him, that it is hard to know whether to give him a hug or a slap.
This tournament does not by itself spell disaster. Every other golfer has had bad shots, bad days, bad years. But the miracle of McIlroy is that he is not any other golfer.
When he first emerged as a grinning teenager, he emerged fully-formed, ready and destined to rule the game for a decade or more.
This may yet come to pass. But the turbulence of the past few months has left him concussed. It is not just the swing, not just the clubs, not just the pressure, not just the girl. It is all of them in tandem.
McIlroy looks like a young man whose world has been spinning so violently that he scarcely knows which way is north any more.
He scarcely appeared to know where the fairway was any more. McIlroy hit just eight out of 28 fairways during his two rounds. Only David Duval and Scott Piercy in the entire 153-man field hit fewer. That is a quite stunning failure to adhere to one most sacrosanct tenets of links golf.
Bear in mind, too, that at most holes he was taking long irons off the tee.
He missed left, he missed right. Sometimes both on the same hole. Every time, he would bring his club head to the ground with a thud, pull the peak of his cap a little further over his eyes and hand the club back to his caddie with drooping shoulders. Golf is an awfully lonely game when played from the rough.
Around the turn, he appeared to perk up a little. With nothing to lose and nothing to gain, he could simply play. He dusted off his driver and gave it a few airings.
Two birdies in the last four holes at least sparing him the ignominious prospect of being beaten by Sir Nick Faldo, an occasional critic of his.
“I still wanted to get something out of those last 10 holes,” he said. “And I hit some good drives out there. By the looks of it I should have probably hit with the driver everywhere this week. It might have done me better.”
McIlroy was not the only Briton to crash and burn on Muirfield’s glassy knolls. Justin Rose and Luke Donald also failed to make the cut, neither player able to locate any sort of consistency over the two days. Rose finished on 10-over in his first tournament since Merion.
Donald’s challenge, meanwhile, could already have been given up as a bad job after his 80 on Thursday. But he rallied a little on Friday; after beginning with two birdies in three holes, he faded on the back nine to finish with a 72, 10-over for the tournament.
But while their dejection was manifest, they could scarcely hold a candle to McIlroy, who now enjoys nine days off before his next appointment in Akron, Ohio.
Nine days to sort out his game and his brain. Nine days to relax, to ruminate, to wonder what can possibly have happened to him.