ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – Adding to the weight of this 150th Open is the venue.
With the Old Course a part of the Open rota, a player in his prime will likely get only a handful of cracks to win at the game’s most storied links. Jack Nicklaus, echoing Bobby Jones, said earlier this week that a player’s résumé isn’t truly complete unless he has won at St. Andrews.
“It’s the holy grail of our sport,” Rory McIlroy said Tuesday at The Open. “It’s one of the highest achievements that you can have in golf.”
McIlroy hasn’t played an Open here since 2010, when he opened with a then-major-record-tying 63. Reflecting on that magical round a dozen years ago, McIlroy said he didn’t remember much about where he made his birdies – but he could recall where he made a frustrating par, on 17, when he stuffed a 6-iron to 3 feet but missed the putt.
“That’s the one thing that sticks out in my mind because I remember coming off the golf course thinking that was a really good opportunity for the first person ever to shoot 62 in a major,” he said, “and I didn’t quite get it done. So you can always be better.”
Of course, McIlroy also could have been much better in the second round, when he ballooned to an 80 in wicked weather, dooming him to a tie for third, well behind runaway winner Louis Oosthuizen. McIlroy didn’t get an opportunity to continue that momentum when the Open returned to the Old Course in 2015. A few weeks before the event, and with his game in stellar form, he missed his title defense after suffering an ankle injury while playing soccer. He had been the pre-championship favorite.
When asked by the moderator Tuesday whether he would be “staying away from the football this week,” McIlroy chuckled.
“Yeah,” he said, “very much so.”
A St. Andrews Open is too important to miss again.