Otherwise, this 152nd British Open has continued to behave like a classic British Open in terms of wind, hitting many players with scores that seemed plentiful, and it has given a nod to some wind veterans heading into the weekend: Ireland’s Shane Lowry leads at 7 under par, and England’s Justin Rose and major debutant Dan Brown are at 5 under par after both coming through the tough trials of qualifying. Lowry, for his part, won the 2019 British Open at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland as the wind sang, the sky brooded, the drifts roared and the clouds wept heavily with joy. Scottie Scheffler, for his part, lurks at 2 under par with his six wins this year and his No. 1 ranking while coming from a wind-prone location (Texas) and answering a question about whether he thinks his name causes stress to other players by using his characteristic level of bombast.
“Not really,” he said.
“I’m looking forward to the weekend,” said McIlroy, whose triple-bogey 8 on No. 4 put him out of contention early, ensuring his major drought would extend to 38 and his eighth major cut in this ridiculous stretch. Referring to Lowry, he said: “He’s so creative. I think just looking at the coverage of the last two days, the kind of tight cuts he can make, especially on the front nine, is really going to help him. Yeah, look, he loves these conditions. The Open Championship is his favorite tournament in the world. He’s more motivated for that than anything else. I’m looking forward to cheering him on and hopefully he gets his second (claret) cup.”
He won’t have to contend with those who couldn’t battle the fierce wind at Troon on the Firth of Clyde, which reached ideal sailing levels by mid-afternoon. He hit people off the tee or at least before the turn, sending them into the vegetation and the hustle and bustle. He often had people searching for golf balls in the wilderness as if they were on a treasure hunt. He eliminated Tiger Woods at about No. 2, when his tee shot veered through the grey sky into a botanical bonanza and the 77 he piled on his 79 looked reserved. He made a double bogey there, missed his third consecutive major cut and ran away for five months looking forward to this father-son event in December that he dubbed “our fifth major.”
Justin Thomas, whose 68 on Thursday looked excellent and controversial, slipped from third to 38th when his 78 was marked by this false refrain: bogeys at Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 6; double bogey at No. 5; triple bogey at No. 9. His 33 over the back nine after his 45 over the front nine was described as Herculean. Robert MacIntyre, the 27-year-old Scot who just won the Scottish Open with great enthusiasm and said he drank heavily afterward, shot 7-5-5-8 through the first four holes, meaning two triple bogeys and 8 over. “It was carnage,” he said. He, too, did well to hold on for a 75 to make the carnage cut of 6 over by one shot. Sahith Theegala made a triple bogey 8 on No. 6, Elvis Smylie made a triple bogey 8 on No. 4, David Puig made a triple bogey 8 on No. 4 and Angel Hidalgo made a quadruple bogey 9 on No. 4.
The front and middle rounds kicked the backs of a player of the caliber of Wyndham Clark, the 2023 U.S. Open champion and 2024 Olympian. He shot an 80, plummeted to 16 over and was gone. Japanese prospect Aguri Iwasaki, 26, peppered his 91 with some numbers rarely seen in such prestigious events: back-to-back 9s, a quintuple bogey on No. 13 and a rarely seen sextuple bogey on the par-3 No. 14, during which he made three bunker shots from 13 feet or less.
“I guess you’ve got three different sixes here,” the great Padraig Harrington said of the course sequences. “You’ve got six downwind, into the wind. Then you’ve got six in the middle that are really tricky. They’re really tricky. There’s blind shots. There’s gorse.”
At the famous Railway Hole, No. 11, Lowry ended up making a double bogey but said: “To be honest, I was pretty happy to come away with a 6.”
Also at this point in the course, Joaquin Niemann’s quintuple bogey on the short par 3 Postage Stamp No. 8 deserves criticism. He went into a greenside bunker. He crossed to another greenside bunker. He went zero yards and stayed in that greenside bunker. Then he went 27 yards to another greenside bunker.
Question: “So what was going through your mind as you were going from…”
Niemann: “From one bunker to another?”
Journalist: “From one bunker to another.”
Niemann: “Get him out of there.”
In another spot, McIlroy’s second shot from his hometown near the fourth hole was moved six feet, suggesting a big 8. He finished in his realistic mind, marking the second major occasion this year when “the wind got the better of me,” as he put it on Friday at the Masters and on Thursday and Friday here. “Yeah, I think once I made the 8 on the fourth hole, that was it,” he said. “Twenty-two holes into the event” – an event he was planning to play – “I was thinking about where I’m going to go on vacation next week.” He called it “a pretty insignificant 14 holes after that.”
The big holes are left to Rose, the 2013 US Open winner who is hoping for a big fall at 43, and Brown, who said that after taking the first-round lead, “I was exhausted” but still shot a 72 without collapsing. And they are left to Lowry, who has emerged as a heavy favourite at Portrush, so much so that one observer asked if the chasers should be worried. “I don’t know,” Lowry said good-naturedly, adding shortly afterwards: “Honestly, I’m not sure Scottie Scheffler is too worried about someone in the form he’s in.”
And the meaningful holes, in another way, are left to Max Homa. His 28-foot attempt to make the cut went past McIlroy on the way, and when it landed, Homa, who called it “an out-of-body experience,” screamed. “I didn’t really expect to scream like I won a golf tournament,” he said. That led to a typically gracious hug from McIlroy, who left with that slight frown so familiar on a night that was more enjoyable than it should have been.