At first when I heard that Rory McIlroy was considering leaving his driver in his locker for this week’s India DP World Championship, I thought he was speaking figuratively. Leaving it in his closet as in not using it much. But then, when he appeared for the first time, it turned out that he had taken the driver out of his bag. The second round? The same thing. And it makes sense, when you hear him explain it. But we’ve also never seen this from Rory before. So let’s talk about why this is interesting.
(Let’s talk about a few other things, too.)
1. Rory has never done this before.
He first teased it in his pre-tournament press conference.
“I’d say the next time I hit my driver will be in Abu Dhabi,” he joked, referring to his next tour start. But it wasn’t actually a joke. “I don’t think I’m going to hit a driver this week. I just don’t think the risk is worth the reward. I’d rather put myself two or three clubs back and hit a 7-iron on a par-4 than hit a wedge, where if you just get it out of line here, the ball is gone. You’re hitting it in the jungle and you’re not going to get a big number up very quickly.”
Then came his comments after the first round – his first professional round without his most famous club (and his dog cover).
“The dog was out of the bag, probably sleeping in the closet,” he said. “Yeah, I was thinking about that last night before I went to bed. Sometimes, if you’re really conservative off par 5, you can have like a 5-wood on the green, but I’m never going to hit driver, so I just thought I should go 2-iron, 3-iron, 4-iron, 4-iron all the way, and then I should hit it for a 5-wood. a par-5 But I just don’t see any holes there that I hit for them hit more than say 260, 270 off the tee.”
2. My friend has, however.
I have a close friend who takes the driver out of the bag just because he knows that if it’s in there, at some point he’s going to be tempted to hit it, then it’s going to take the ball out of play and he’s going to have a bad time. McIlroy is basically doing the same thing. He just hits his long irons about 80-100 yards behind my friend who is a 20 handicap.
3. Then again, it’s never over any of this before.
This is McIlroy’s first time in India and is one of the highest-profile tournaments in the country’s golf history. It seems like a win-win either way; McIlroy has expressed his interest in playing here for years, and he continues to find joy in new golf tournaments around the world. And because the DP World Tour has a more lenient policy around appearance fees, it’s safe to assume that McIlroy and his high-profile peers are being well compensated for their time this week.
4. The numbers tell a fascinating story
Through two rounds, the average driving distance for the Indian Championship is just over 265 yards on his measured holes. This is it wild when you consider the average PGA Tour driving distance is 303.3 yards. McIlroy’s driverless strategy still has him in the first half, averaging 270.25 yards. But that’s more than 50 yards behind his 323-yard average. There’s a wide range of strategies, though: South Africa’s Thriston Lawrence put bombs away en route to a 308-yard average over two rounds, with medium-length Brian Harman right behind him at 299.5 yards a pop.
What about McIlroy’s accuracy? He has hit 75 percent of his fairways, good for T17 in the field and miles ahead of his PGA Tour average of 51.2 percent. The deal is pretty clear.
5. Looks do too.
If you spend any time watching India’s championships on TV (and I recommend it, especially if you live in the US and are an insomniac) you’ll quickly understand why these guys are stretching so far – the course is in the middle of New Delhi, the world’s second most populous city, but it’s also basically cut through a jungle. Corridors are narrow and doom spells are lacking.
6. For that matter, the sounds tell a fascinating story.
You can hear the sounds of the city in every minute of the broadcast – even in the fun social clips that DP World Tour has posted. We often hear what courses are like in major cities, when in fact they are in the quiet suburbs of quiet suburbs, but not here! The extent to which this course is in the mix is ​​worth embracing.
7. He’s still losing out on his fairest companions
It’s no shock that this course would be a good fit for McIlroy’s two closest friends on Tour, given their statistical profiles; Tommy Fleetwood (who leads at 12 under through 36 holes) is just under average length, but is one of the fairest drivers in the world and an outstanding iron player. You could say something similar about Shane Lowry (11 under, T2) who is particularly fair off the tee and particularly elite with an iron in hand from the fairway.
“There’s a lot of holes where you’re not hitting a lot off the tee and you’re trying to put it in play and that’s why I think it suits me,” Lowry said. “There’s a lot of middle irons there, which are a strength of my game.”
8. This is the golf experiment we’ve been waiting for.
People in and around golf professionals think and talk obsessively about distance. If the pros hit it too far, if the golf courses are too short, what can anyone do about any of it. This week is definitely an example of how not to emphasize distance as a skill; accuracy off the tee is essential to success, while the driver has effectively been outlawed. And the players seem tickled by the test.
“It’s great. We talked about it a little bit there — it’s just such a unique challenge for all of us,” Fleetwood said. “I haven’t hit more than a 5-wood. The one hole I could hit the most is 18, but you get to it and you’re like, ‘Well, I haven’t hit one and I don’t feel too good about it.’ It’s such a unique challenge, and the greens are getting a little firmer and the pins have been tricky.
“It’s been very, very enjoyable. It’s a test of patience when you’re not quite on it, because if it’s one of those courses, you take some of them where you feel – if you hit it well from the top, you’ll have some irons and short wedges and you feel like you always have a chance to make that mistake. It’s a very big test of patience.”
9. It is also a reminder for us.
I live in Seattle, where many courses are presented as bowling alleys. But I’m so conditioned to seeing pros hit driver or 3-wood everywhere that I assume if they showed up here, they’d do the same. This is evidence to the contrary. Even though analytics has steered the pros toward a bomb-and-meter style of play in recent years, there are limits to that strategy when courses get tight enough and losses become punishing enough. So yes – it’s okay to give up the tee if it means you’ll keep it in the game. Not much fun being stuck in the jungle all day anyway.
10. Sports rule.
I spent my Thursday night watching Joe Flacco exchange punches with Aaron Rodgers in one of the most memorable regular-season games in recent NFL history — and then moved on to catch the sights, sounds and strategies of the Indian Championship. Sports remain the best because they bring the unexpected. Let’s go back to McIlroy’s pre-tournament press conference for the final word:
“I would say that deep down at its core, the core of watching sports, it’s the most real reality show we have. We don’t know the outcome. We don’t know what’s going to happen, and that’s amazing. There’s very little content on TV these days that can do that.”
Two more intriguing rounds in this final episode.
Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.
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