Rory McIlroy can take comfort from Scottie Scheffler’s US Open admission after blow-up
Some encouragement has been given to Rory McIlroy after his disappointment at the US Open.
Scottie Scheffler has been golf’s dominant force as of late, winning a whole host of events at a canter, but even the world No. 1 struggled at Pinehurst as Rory McIlroy came up just short to Bryson DeChambeau at the US Open.
The two-time Masters champion did not even make it into the top 10 as McIlroy looked set to break his decade-long duck for a Major win, before suffering three bogeys in the final four holes to blow his lead and watch his American rival celebrate instead.
McIlroy dazzled up until his meltdown on the final few holes, putting extremely well when others struggled. Few have managed to match, let alone go one better, than Scheffler recently but even the 27-year-old faltered where McIlroy shone.
The American described Pinehurst as a “pretty difficult golf course to try and make a lot of birdies and play some good golf around” after his worst finish since he was T45 at the 2022 CJ Cup, nearly 50 tournaments ago.
Because you could hit it a foot off the fairway and be in a bush, and you could hit it 20 yards off the fairway and have a perfect lie [and] it plays like you’re in the fairway,” Scheffler explained. “So that part of the course I didn’t love. But [fairway to greens], I thought it was fantastic. I thought it was a great test of golf.
When I’m not playing my best, I feel like one of my skills is kind of managing my way around the golf course, knowing where the misses are. When you have pretty much a coin flip on whether or not you’re going to have a swing or not, there’s not really a side of the fairway to miss it on, there are not really areas you can play to, you just have to hit great golf shots.”