Expectations don’t always deliver, rarely in fact; and, for Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, who’d prepped for Oakmont, known as The Beast with due diligence, and with friendly banter, wisecracks and a bit of craic thrown in, it all turned serious – and not so pleasant – when it mattered with scorecards in hand.
Out on the range before their tee time, McIlroy – with a TaylorMade Qi10 back in the bag for the US Open – was on the range with last-minute checks. Niall O’Connor, the former Ulster player now one of his team, stood back and watched as McIlroy hit a drive, more often than not pure and straight, to the far end of the practice ground before each time going back to look at the launch monitor with caddie Harry Diamond.
The time spent with the driver seemed productive, and there was a pep to McIlroy’s step as, that part of the warm-up completed, he headed with a sense of purpose to the short game area where he dropped balls and chipped from various lies. Tight lies. Buried lies.
When McIlroy arrived to the 10th tee, it was to an early-morning chorus of “Rory, Rory” from those gathered in the small bleacher, their mobile phones raised to capture the moment.
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Those phones would be part and parcel of his round, for good and for bad, as he set off with great hopes only to finish with that look of disappointment after he derailed on the homeward journey, a double bogey on the par 3 eighth compounding matters, as he signed for a 74, four-over.
That 74 by McIlroy was the best of a three-ball where each of them in turned headed into he score recorder’s as if beaten up by the demands of a punishing course where the slightest of errors were magnified. Justin Rose put his signature to a 77. Lowry to a 79.
For much of his front nine, McIlroy had plotted his way around the Gil Hanse-redesign, that took the old course back to how its original designers Henry and William Fownes had created, with an air of assurance and, indeed, expectation.
When the driver behaved, it was very, very good. On the par 5 12th hole, McIlroy’s drive of 392 yards – the longest recorded in any US Open – ran so far that it stopped only yards from the spectator crossway that was seemingly safe from such deeds.
McIlroy had started like a train with only one destination on his mind. Although he had a birdie chance from eight feet on his first hole, the 10th, it was a slippery downhill one which ran by. But he got his first birdie of the round on the 11th when a raker – he took nine full steps after it to pick the ball from the hole – and, then, made the most of that huge drive on the 12th to reach the green and two-putt from 40 feet for his birdie to move to two-under through three holes.
He fought, too. On the 15th – a notoriously difficult par 4 – McIlroy made a magnificent par save. His drive was pushed right, into the thick rough, but fortuitously a yard short of the ditch, and he powered a recovery out some 50 yards short of the green, pitched to seven feet and sank the par putt.
On the 17th, again after his tee-shot was pushed right into the rough, and his recovery found a greenside bunker, McIlroy fought the good fight and splashed out to seven feet and holed the par putt. McIlroy was right in the business part of things, turning in 33, bogey free and being Rory McIlroy.
For Lowry, that front nine was a struggle. A double-bogey five on the par 3 16th – where his tee shot found the massive greenside bunker on the left and his woes were compounded when the recovery sand wedge landed on the green and raced down the slope to the rough on the far side – contributed to a front side of 39 which didn’t get any better on the way home.
In all, Lowry had three double-bogeys in his round – another on the second and also on the seventh – with the lone ray of sunshine, and a rare smile and a fist bump with caddie Darren Reynolds, coming when he holed out from 160 yards for an eagle two on the third. It was a round mostly to forget, one without a single birdie, and he looked battered and bruised as he headed to the scorer’s post-round. Lowry had found only eight of 18 greens in regulation in the five-and-a-half hour slog.
McIlroy’s homeward run was even worse than Lowry’s, 41 to his friend’s 40. Having moved to the first tee among those perched towards the top end of the leaderboard, the world number two stumbled and tumbled.
Four bogeys had been added to McIlroy’s card by the time he stood on par 3 eighth tee, where his 3-wood tee-shot to the green 289 yards away missed the green right by some 20 yards. His ball was buried, and he moved it 10 yards into yet more thick rough. A double-bogey five came his way before a par putt on the closing hole (his 34th putt of the round) gave him a 41 to add to his 33 for a total of 74.
