When I first heard that Rory McIlroy was considering leaving the driver in his locker for this week’s DP World India Championship, I thought he was speaking figuratively. He leaves it in his locker because he doesn’t use it much. But when he showed up for the start time of the first round, it turned out that he had quite literally taken the driver out of his bag. Second round? The same. And it makes sense when you hear him explain it. But we’ve never seen this from Rory either. So let’s discuss why this is interesting.
(Let’s discuss some other things too.)
1. Rory has never done this before.
He first teased it during his pre-tournament press conference.
“I would say the next time I touch my driver will be in Abu Dhabi,” he joked, referring to his next tournament start. But actually it wasn’t a joke. “I don’t think I’m going to hit a driver this week. I just don’t feel like the risk is worth the reward. I’d rather leave myself two or three clubs and hit a 7-iron into a par-4 instead of hitting a wedge. If you just get it off line here, the ball is gone. You hit it into the jungle and you can’t get it out. You can accumulate a very large number very quickly.”
Then came his comments after the first round – his first professional round without his most famous club (and his signature dog headgear).
“The dog was out of the bag and probably sleeping in the locker,” he said. “Yeah, I was thinking about it last night before I went to bed. Sometimes if you’re really conservative on a par-5, you might have a 5-wood in the green, but I’m never going to hit the driver, so I thought I should go all the way through 2-iron, 3-iron, 4-iron, and then I have a 5-wood in case I need to hit it for an approach shot on a par-5. But I just don’t see any out there hole I hit to hit it more than say 260, 270 off the tee.”
2. My friend does.
I have a good friend who has taken the driver out of the bag just because he knows that if the ball is in there, at some point he will be tempted to hit it, he will then drive the ball out of play and have a bad time. McIlroy is essentially doing the same thing. He happens to hit his long irons about 80 to 100 yards past my friend, who has a 20 handicap.
3. But then again, he’s never done each of this before.
This is McIlroy’s first time in India and it is one of the highest-profile tournaments in the country’s golfing history. It seems like a win-win situation on both sides; McIlroy has expressed his interest in playing here for several years and continues to enjoy new golf tournaments around the world. And with the DP World Tour taking a more lenient policy on appearances, it’s safe to assume McIlroy and his high-profile colleagues will be well compensated for their time this week.
4. The numbers tell a fascinating story
Over two rounds, the average driving distance for the India Championship is just over 265 yards on the measured holes. That is wild when you consider that the average driving distance of the PGA Tour is 303.3 meters. McIlroy’s driverless strategy still sees him in the top half, with an average of 270.25 metres. But that’s more than 50 yards behind his average of 323 yards. However, there is a wide range of strategies: South Africa’s Thriston Lawrence threw bombs on his way to an average of 308 meters in two rounds, with average height Brian Harman close behind him at 299.5 meters a pop.
As for 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 trade-off is quite clear.
5. The images too.
If you spend any time watching the India Championship on TV (and I recommend it, especially if you live in the US and suffer from insomnia), you’ll quickly see why these guys are so far back – the course is in the middle of New Delhi, the second most populous city in the world, but it’s also essentially carved out of a jungle. The corridors are narrow and missing spells spell doom.
6. By the way, the sounds tell a fascinating story.
You can hear sounds of the city in every minute of the broadcast – and even on the fun social clips that DP World Tour has posted. We often hear how the courses are in big cities, when in reality they are on the quiet outskirts, but not here! It’s worth embracing just how much this course is in the mix.
7. He still loses to his straighter friends
It’s no surprise that this course would go well for McIlroy’s two best friends on Tour, given their statistical profiles; Tommy Fleetwood (who leads at 12 under through 36 holes) is slightly below average height, but is one of the right-most drivers in the world and an incredible iron player. You could say something similar about Shane Lowry (11 under, T2), who comes remarkably straight off the tee and is especially elite with an iron in hand from the fairway.
“There’s a lot of holes where you don’t hit much off the tee and you try to get it into play and that’s why I think it suits me,” Lowry said. “There are a lot of mid-irons that are the strength of my game.”
8. This is the wave experiment we’ve been waiting for.
People in and around professional golf think and talk obsessively about distance. Whether professionals go too far or golf courses are too short, what can someone do about it? This week is certainly an example of how to de-emphasize distance as a skill; accuracy off the tee is essential for success, while the driver is effectively banned. And the players seem tickled by the test.
“It’s great. We’ve talked about it a lot – it’s just such a unique challenge for all of us,” Fleetwood said. “I haven’t hit more than a 5-wood. The only hole I could hit more is 18, but when you get to that you think, ‘Well, I haven’t hit one yet, and I don’t really feel comfortable with it.’ It’s such a unique challenge, and the greens get a little firmer and the pins were tricky.
“It was a lot of fun. It’s a test of patience if you’re not really into it yet, because just as it’s one of those courses, you get a few that you feel good about – if you hit it right off the tee, you have a few short irons and wedges and you feel like you always have the chance to be wrong. It’s such a waiting game. You have to be very patient. It was a great test.”
9. It is also a memory for us.
I live in Seattle where many lanes exist as bowling alleys. But I’m so used to the pros hitting Driver or 3-wood everywhere that I assume if they showed up here they’d do the same. This is proof to the contrary. Even as analytics has pushed the pros toward a bomb-and-gauge style of play in recent years, there are limits to that strategy when the races get tight enough and misses become punishing enough. So yes, it’s okay to lie down off the tee if it means keeping the tee in play. It’s not much fun being stuck in the jungle all day anyway.
10. Sports rule.
I spent my Thursday night watching Joe Flacco trade punches with Aaron Rodgers in one of the most memorable regular-season matchups in recent NFL history — and eventually turned around to see the sights, sounds and strategies of the India Championship. Sport remains the most fun there is, because it produces the unexpected. For the final word, let’s go back to McIlroy’s pre-tournament press conference:
“I would say that deep at the core, the essence of watching sports, it’s the most realistic 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 actually do that.”
Two more intriguing rounds in this latest episode.
Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.
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