The 37-year-old was among the early starters at Aronimink Golf Club in south-west Philadelphia and appeared to have steadied the ship after an opening bogey.<\/p>\n
He hit back with a birdie before reeling off 10 straight pars. But his back nine \u2013 the first nine on the course \u2013 decimated his round with five bogeys and a solitary birdie leaving him four over par, seven behind the leaders.<\/a><\/p>\n Asked to describe his round, McIlroy said: \u201cS***.<\/p>\n \u201cI started missing fairways. I missed the fairway right on four, the fairway right on six, the fairway right on seven, fairway right on nine.<\/p>\n \u201cI made that birdie on five to get back to even-par after the soft bogey on four, then I just got on that bogey train at the end.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just not driving the ball well enough. It\u2019s been a problem all year for the most part. I just need to try to figure it out. I honestly thought I\u2019d figured it out.<\/p>\n \u201cJust sort of, once I get under the gun, it just seems like it starts to go a little bit wayward on me.\u201d<\/p>\n McIlroy is chasing a seventh major win after defending his Masters title last month.<\/a> He had to cut short his first practice round here due to a troublesome toe issue but confirmed that did not affect him.<\/p>\n The Northern Irishman had said he felt the course was a \u201cbash driver down, figure it out\u201d course but a number of players came unstuck when missing the fairway.<\/p>\n McIlroy admitted being wayward was more penalising than he thought.<\/p>\n \u201cThere certainly is a penalty for missing the fairway. Probably more than what I anticipated after being here, whatever it is, two Fridays ago,\u201d McIlroy said.<\/p>\n McIlroy had huge support from the vast galleries following his eye-catching group, which also featured Jon Rahm<\/a> and Jordan Spieth<\/a> \u2013 the latter chasing a win here to complete the career grand slam.<\/p>\n Spieth and Rahm both finished their rounds on one under par.<\/p>\n The Spaniard had an up and down time but a pitch in for an eagle and a chip-in birdie on the back nine helped lift his spirits.<\/p>\n Pre-tournament talk that Aronimink would not trouble the world\u2019s best golfers proved unfounded, with the clubhouse lead at only three under when the trio finished their round.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was some chatter where people thought 15 to 20 under was going to win. And I think that got to somebody in the PGA and they did something about it!\u201d Rahm said.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause if the golf course stays like this and it keeps firming up, yeah, obviously it\u2019s not going to be anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Rahm also apologised after hitting a volunteer with a divot during a frustrated swing.<\/p>\n \u201cJust out of frustration, I tried to make an air swing, just over the grass, and I wasn\u2019t looking, took a divot, and unfortunately, I hit a volunteer,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n \u201cI couldn\u2019t feel any worse. That\u2019s why I was there apologising. I need to somehow track him down to give him a present because that\u2019s inexcusable and for something that could be completely avoidable.\u201d<\/p>\n PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[6873,85,46,105,6874],"class_list":["post-442692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-bestof","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports","tag-topix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Rory](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/14-d345f6acefd94c62bcaf31021963458a.jpg\")
Rory McIlroy cut a frustrated figure in Philadelphia (PA)<\/p>\n![\"Rory](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/14-a6f7eb20b8bb44d09e345dd4eff828db.jpg\")
Rory McIlroy will have to battle back to mount a challenge (PA)<\/p>\n![\"Jordan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2276246745...jpeg\")
Jordan Spieth made an encouraging start as he attempts to complete the career grand slam (Getty)<\/p>\n