SOUTHPORT, England \u2014 Rory McIlroy has done enough to make it to the weekend at Royal Birkdale.<\/p>\n
He’ll have to do much, much more to lift the claret jug.<\/p>\n
The world No. 2 bounced back with a 3-under 67 in the second round at the Open Championship on Friday, ensuring he’ll make the cut with his score of 1-under par overall.<\/p>\n
The projected cut is currently at level par.<\/p>\n
McIlroy knew he’d left a few shots out there, though, especially when he saw that two other morning starters \u2014 Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns \u2014 tied the major championship record with rounds of 62 in gorgeous conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a little better today,\u201d McIlroy said, \u201cbut still didn\u2019t feel 100 per cent comfortable. Hopefully try to figure that out as the week goes on.\u201d<\/p>\n
He might have left it too late.<\/p>\n
McIlroy was seven shots off the clubhouse lead held by Herbert, on 8-under par. More relevant might be No. 4-ranked Cameron Young being at 6 under, while players like top-ranked Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau were just starting out their second rounds and already higher on the leaderboard.<\/p>\n
McIlroy, who won the Open just down the road in Hoylake in 2014, struggled on the greens in shooting 72 on Thursday and said he still hasn’t figured them out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like I hit good putts and they did something completely different to what I saw in the read, and I think that\u2019s a little unnerving,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
McIlroy was, however, very happy with his driving. He drove the green on the par-4 ninth hole \u2014 for the second straight day \u2014 with a 377-yard tee shot that settled 11 feet from the pin, setting up the third of his four birdies on Friday.<\/p>\n
Yet, for all his excellence off the tee, he has only made one birdie on the par 5s this week.<\/p>\n
McIlroy hopes the conditions allow him to be aggressive off the tee over the weekend.<\/p>\n
It might be his only hope of a victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think any time I can get a driver in my hand, I\u2019m going to try to,\u201d he said. “I just feel like with how I\u2019m feeling with the driver, I think it\u2019s a big advantage if I can get the ball down there and take out some of these fairway bunkers.<\/p>\n
\u201cl continue to do that when I can, and then I\u2019m still trying to figure out these greens a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SOUTHPORT, England \u2014 Rory McIlroy has done enough to make it to the weekend at Royal Birkdale. He’ll…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-808729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}