Calendar An icon of a desk calendar. Cancel An icon of a circle with a diagonal line across. Caret An icon of a block arrow pointing to the right. Email An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of the Facebook "f" mark. Google An icon of the Google "G" mark. Linked In An icon of the Linked In "in" mark. Logout An icon representing logout. Profile An icon that resembles human head and shoulders. Telephone An icon of a traditional telephone receiver. Tick An icon of a tick mark. Is Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes. Is Not Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes with a diagonal line through it. Pause Icon A two-lined pause icon for stopping interactions. Quote Mark A opening quote mark. Quote Mark A closing quote mark. Arrow An icon of an arrow. Folder An icon of a paper folder. Breaking An icon of an exclamation mark on a circular background. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Caret An icon of a caret arrow. Clock An icon of a clock face. Close An icon of the an X shape. Close Icon An icon used to represent where to interact to collapse or dismiss a component Comment An icon of a speech bubble. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Ellipsis An icon of 3 horizontal dots. Envelope An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Home An icon of a house. Instagram An icon of the Instagram logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. Magnifying Glass An icon of a magnifying glass. Search Icon A magnifying glass icon that is used to represent the function of searching. Menu An icon of 3 horizontal lines. Hamburger Menu Icon An icon used to represent a collapsed menu. Next An icon of an arrow pointing to the right. Notice An explanation mark centred inside a circle. Previous An icon of an arrow pointing to the left. Rating An icon of a star. Tag An icon of a tag. Twitter An icon of the Twitter logo. Video Camera An icon of a video camera shape. Speech Bubble Icon A icon displaying a speech bubble WhatsApp An icon of the WhatsApp logo. Information An icon of an information logo. Plus A mathematical 'plus' symbol. Duration An icon indicating Time. Success Tick An icon of a green tick. Success Tick Timeout An icon of a greyed out success tick. Loading Spinner An icon of a loading spinner. Facebook Messenger An icon of the facebook messenger app logo. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Facebook Messenger An icon of the Twitter app logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. WhatsApp Messenger An icon of the Whatsapp messenger app logo. Email An icon of an mail envelope. Copy link A decentered black square over a white square.

Rory McIlroy finds the Old Course ‘fiddly’ but is finely tuned in first round of the 150th Open

Rory McIlroy watched by the galleries in the first round at St Andrews.
Rory McIlroy watched by the galleries in the first round at St Andrews.

“Fiddly hasn’t been my forte”, said Rory McIlroy, but he’s exactly where he needs to be after the first round of the 150th Open.

The favourite for the championship found the Old Course trickier on the first day than he can ever remember. He still shot a six-under 66 to lie just a couple of strokes behind early leader, American Cameron Young.

Four of Rory’s Open rounds on the Old Course look like this: 63-68-69-66. That’s 22-under. The one outlier is the famous 80 in the second round in 2010.

You have to think had the wind not raged that day and that the five-a-sides in 2015 not been played, he might have two more Jugs by now.

‘It’s just really fiddly out there’

No matter. He looks poised now for a weekend, having got his head around the difference between the Old Course like this and at other times.

“It’s the fiddliest Open that I’ve played,” he said, to puzzled looks from American journalists. “That’s the only way I can really describe it. It’s just really fiddly out there.

“Carnoustie was firm in 2018, but it wasn’t like this. The 18th at Carnoustie was like a runway.

“But around the greens here and just all the slopes and undulations and everything. As the tournament progresses, you’re going to get some funny bounces and it’s going to test your patience at times.

“I’ve played this course a lot. I haven’t played it a lot in these conditions. And I think I know it pretty well.

“I maybe saw a couple of pin positions I’ve never seen out there today, but apart from that, I thought I handled everything pretty good.

”Fiddly hasn’t really been my forte over the years. But I’m hopefully going to make it my forte this week.”

‘The fairways are so firm’

He’s made adjustments to his bag to cope with how fiddly everything is.

“I’m using a lob wedge with less bounce than I usually do,” he said.. Even still I think I could do with using even less bounce. The fairways are so firm.

“Some of the lies are so bare, That second shot on 17, I felt like if I had a full lob wedge there and I didn’t get it quite right, then I could have thinned the thing into the middle of the road.

“You’re up there leading The Open Championship and you’re worried about hitting a lob wedge out of bounds because of a bare lie off the fairway.

“It’s tricky. And I put a 2-iron in the bag instead of a 5-wood, and I hit that quite a bit today. That’s been a good club this week.”

Maybe a 2022 version of Nick Faldo’s two-wood he used in 1990? That was a “good links club” in those days.

From third from last to leading the Open

Leader Cameron Young tries to figure out the Old Course.

Young, from New York City – “it would be a stretch to say from the streets of New York” he admitted – shot 76-77 at Renaissance last week to finish 156th out of 160. He looked like a fish out of water on alien land.

But at super linksy, fiddly St Andrews, he was eight-under 64. As they say in America, go figure.

He’d actually played the Old Course before, on a family trip when just 13 when they also played The New, Kingsbarns, Carnoustie, Gullane, Crail and some others. But his links golf experience amounted to little more than that.

“I don’t think I’ve figured that much of it out, honestl,” he admitted. “You could play every day here for a year and you would just scratch the surface of what you can know about this place.

“I think we probably have seen about 5 percent of what’s out there. There’s a pretty endless amount to take in.

“I shot a million last week, and this week all of a sudden I’m pretty comfortable. There’s been a lot of work and a lot of preparation in between.

“But I know things can change in an instant, especially out here given how important the bounces and the mindset that you have are.”

Conversation