Golf: Old Course has its revenge on McIlroy

Rory McIlroy has followed up his record-tying 63 at St. Andrews with an 8-over 80 that sent him tumbling down the leaderboard.

Rory McIlroy stood on the sunlit first tee yesterday afternoon as a young man on top of the world, and apparently without a care in it. He had walked off the practice green, rolling his hips and chewing gum, with studied insouciance. "So," he seemed to be saying. "Just what appears to be the problem here?" By the time he had reached the turn, however, he had been inwardly reduced to some haggard old Lear, bellowing back at the tempest.

Having hurtled round in 63 the previous day, McIlroy was watching his ambitions strewn across the Old Course in a sadistic revenge. So this was the young man who had famously never required more than 69 shots here? Never mind all this talk about "the old lady". The fact was that McIlroy had only ever tackled this crazed bitch wearing her muzzle. This time, she was sinking her fangs mercilessly deep. Four over for the front nine, McIlroy suddenly faced one of the toughest challenges of his young career, in both temperament and technique, to remain in realistic contention.

This was always going to be a day to take down the sails, to get to work with the oars. For a lad of 21, of course, he is unusually seasoned in pragmatic links play. He was just 16, after all, when he shot 61 to break the course record at Royal Portrush. Here he had vowed to "run those shots into the greens and keep the ball below the wind". In the event, however, that policy proved impractical without a spade and a miner's lamp.

As the gale keened across the Fife coast, ambition had certainly acquired a more modest guise. Earlier McIlroy had exchanged high fives with his compatriot, Graeme McDowell, on his return from a morning round of 68, taking him to five under for the tournament. The younger man set out knowing that a nice, steady 72, this time, would do very nicely.

And he began beautifully. Admittedly his first drive, in marked contrast to the announcement of his name, was greeted with a critical silence; and his second shot left him an awkward descent to the hole. But he polished off his par, and gave himself birdie chances on each of the next two holes, as well, before setting himself up with an immaculate drive off the fourth. And then the klaxon went, for the suspension of play, and he sprawled upon his back in comic distress.

Already, perhaps, he sensed a malevolent tweak of his nerves. To have started so serenely, as the storm baulked the air, had seemed to reiterate his comfort with the giddiest altitudes of his vocation. During the idle hour that followed, however, the contrast in the caprice of his environment plainly gnawed at his youthful certainty.

The difference in McIlroy was abruptly apparent. He resumed by chipping into a hollow on the edge of the green, whacked his first putt fully 15 feet past the hole, and duly required two more - albeit only just. A first blemish of his tournament, then, and his prospects of redeeming it on the next, hitherto the tamest of par fives, were lost as the wind flung his drive left, and his approach into dense rough on the fringe. He hacked out and left a difficult birdie putt 18 inches short. Suddenly he looked full of doubt, pulling away even as he was about to tap in, whether observing or fearing a mischievous tremor in the ball.

On the sixth, his drive instead veered right, leaving him stabbing out of deep rough; left a chip to the flag, he gave it too much grip, and two putts snagged him back to seven under. There was more purgatory on the next: rough, bunker, a brave second putt curling round the lip. Six under. All of a sudden he only had a shot in hand of McDowell and was fully six behind Louis Oosthuizen. It was slipping away so quickly. On the par-three eighth, his tee shot swayed behind a gorse bush. Five under. After scraping together a birdie chance on nine, he missed from 12 feet and turned round in 40.

If it can be so hard to live up to one round at a major, then how about the four that changed the life of McDowell? Not even McIlroy, of course, has ever got round here in 62, as did he in 2004. This time, moreover, McDowell had arrived as author of a scandalously underplayed major success, at Pebble Beach last month.

In the first round McDowell had posted a pedestrian 71, but yesterday he did really well to turn round a mediocre start, mustering four birdies between holes five and nine, and finished birdie, par, birdie. Afterwards he admitted that he has found it difficult to keep his focus. "You know, it's difficult for me to move on," he said. "I don't really want to, but I've got to get refocused on the task at hand. I'm going into the weekend with no expectations at all, really putting no pressure on myself. I'll be out tomorrow, free swinging, just trying to control the ball in this weather."

The previous afternoon McIlroy had said that his friend's success in the US Open had infected him with confidence. Asked about that, McDowell raised an eyebrow. "That's a scary prospect," he said. "If he gets any more confidence we could all be in trouble."

That seemed a lamentably remote contingency, however, as the shadows lengthened in the smiling, villainous evening, and McIlroy turned back towards the hazards - and opportunities - that still lay ahead.

- INDEPENDENT