With 53 events on his schedule over the last two years, Rory McIlroy was more than ready for the two-plus-month hiatus following his WGC-HSBC Champions win in November.
Knocking off the rust to start a new year this week at Torrey Pines included a curveball that the 30-year-old Irishman wasn’t quite anticipating.
“That driver went in my bag at about 4 p.m. (Wednesday afternoon),” McIlroy said after shooting a 5-under-par 67 on the Torrey Pines North Course, one stroke off the first-round lead at the Farmers Insurance Open.
“I didn’t drive the ball particularly well in the pro-am, so I worked with the TaylorMade guys yesterday on the range and we figured a couple things out. It’s funny, you go through the testing process at the start of the year with new equipment. There’s things that seem really good on the range, but once you actually play some rounds with them competitively and try to hit certain shots, things sort of, I guess, appear.
“A couple things appeared that I didn’t like (Wednesday) in the pro-am.”
Of course, they’d disappeared by Thursday.
Thanks to some “golf geeky” adjustments with TaylorMade staff, McIlroy hit 11 of 14 fairways and averaged 309.5 yards off the tee, tied for 12th in the field. He also bagged seven birdies against two bogeys on the North.
McIlroy is making the second start of his career at Torrey Pines. He finished tied for fifth last year, but did not shoot better than 69 on any of his three turns on the South Course.
Locals watch
Xander Schauffele said he felt like he played pretty well, but it wasn’t reflected in his 2-over 74 on the South. Phil Mickelson’s 72 was the best round in a group that also included Rickie Fowler (75).
The recent South renovation could have played a role in the scoring, and Schauffele wasn’t happy about it.
“They’ve got to fix the bunkers,” he said. “You know, on (the 12th hole) it was a little ridiculous. Phil’s ball plugged high on the lip; my ball plugged on the down slope.
“Shots where you’re sitting there like, ‘OK, I’ve missed my shot properly — it’s a 210-yard, par 3 with a bailout to the right.’ Might as well put red stakes around that bunker since all the balls seem to be plugging.”
Last year, the players complained that there wasn’t enough sand in the bunkers. Now it seems there is too much.
Mickelson, who missed the three-round cut in last week’s American Express in La Quinta, said practicing well leading up to the tournament somehow led him to being “excited and anxious” on the course.
“I was hitting it so good,” Mickelson said. “Then I got very jumpy and anxious today and kind of lost my rhythm and kind of hit it all over the place.
“Shot even-par, which is actually a mini-victory because, the way I hit it, it should have been a lot worse. But I feel like it’s close, that there’s a good chance after a morning session tomorrow that I come out and play a really good round on the North.”
Charley Hoffman and Pat Perez shared the best round among the locals, both shooting 3-under 69 on the North Course.
“Got off to a hot start, was 4 under through the first seven holes, so I was looking for a little better than 3 under,” said Hoffman, whose round started on No. 10. “Got a few mud balls out there coming in, made a couple bogeys because I didn’t know where the ball was going, but all-in-all pretty happy with 3 under.”
J.J. Spaun shot 73 on the South while Jamie Lovemark had the same score on the North. That was three shots better than Kevin Stadler (76) on the North.
Spieth pleased with start
Jordan Spieth was playing his first round of 2020 on the Torrey Pines South Course that will host next year’s U.S. Open, and the way his nerves were jangling, he said it felt like a major.
“It’s been a while. I was anxious to get going,” said Spieth, whose last official tournament was the HSBC Champions in early November.
“It was nice to hit a couple of good shots into the first. I missed a couple of putts inside 10 feet to start, but then really started to get it going there when one fell in at 6, and I putted the ball well from there on in.”
By making six birdies and four bogeys, Spieth shot a 2-under 70 that put him in a tie for 24th.
The score became more impressive when considering that only five players notched a better number on the South, which played nearly three strokes harder than the North. (In last year’s first round, the difference was just over two strokes, 71.62 for the South and 69.39 for the North.)
“I kind of came off (Wednesday) with a little momentum the last nine holes of the pro-am,” Spieth said. “Prior to that I was kind of still searching a little bit. I really feel like I trusted what we’ve been working on, which was going to be the most difficult thing; if it feels comfortable, I can still trust it.”
