Rory McIlroy returned to the PGA Tour for the first time since defending his Masters title and produced one of the strangest Thursday rounds of his career: 17 straight pars at Quail Hollow Club, followed by a 15-foot birdie putt on the par-four ninth, his 18th hole, that turned a frustrating bogey-free march into a 1-under 70 and a manageable starting position at the Truist Championship.
The six-time major champion teed off on the par-five 10th and played the first half of his round in textbook regulation, missing fairways only narrowly and keeping the scorecard clean. By the time he reached his final hole he had recorded 17 consecutive pars, an oddity for a player who lives off birdie streaks.
"I knew that I made so many pars, but I was thinking I can't remember the last time I played a round of golf and didn't have a birdie," McIlroy said. "I was more like just try to make one. I felt like I didn't make birdie at seven, didn't make birdie at eight. So then I thought my chance had passed me by, but nice to see one putt go in there at the last."
The final-hole approach from 198 yards left him 15 feet, and the 35-year-old buried it for the only red number on his card. Asked how the celebration compared to his recent run of green-jacket and Masters scenes, he was self-deprecating.
"Not quite," McIlroy said. "It was just more just nice to see one go in at the end. Something to build off."
Quail Hollow is McIlroy's adopted home course in Charlotte, where he holds the course record of 61 from 2015. From 14 starts he has four wins and nine top-tens, and he is the headliner this week with Scottie Scheffler skipping the signature event. A 90-minute weather delay rearranged the morning, and overnight rain transformed the layout he had practiced on Tuesday.
"The rain actually helped the greens," McIlroy said. "They're a little more receptive, and they were rolling a little bit better as well. Everywhere else, the fairways are pretty wet and the golf course is playing very, very long, which should play into my hands. I felt like I hit the ball well and hit enough good shots to be a little better than what I was, but I've got three more days to try to catch up to everyone."
The putter, more than the long game, was the issue. McIlroy left several putts short and read several others incorrectly on the soft Quail Hollow surfaces, but he refused to call it frustration.
"I wasn't frustrated. I was hitting good putts. Some days they just don't want to go in," he said. "I overread a couple on the front side, and then I underread a couple as a reaction to the overreads. It was more of a read thing. I was starting the ball on my line and hitting good putts. I just needed to figure out the reads a little bit better."
The shot of the round may have been the second into the ninth, an awkward fly-er lie from the rough, with a tree blocking the line, that he stuffed to 15 feet with a hard nine-iron from roughly 190 yards.
"I was just hoping that the ball was far enough back that I could get it up over that tree," McIlroy said. "It was a bit of a fly-er lie, so I just hit a really hard nine-iron. I've always been pretty comfortable trying to launch it high and get it up there. So it wasn't probably as difficult as what it looked on TV."
Matt McCarty's record-setting 63 leaves McIlroy six shots back, but on a long, soft Quail Hollow that sets up to his strengths and with three rounds still to play before next week's PGA Championship at Aronimink, the Northern Irishman has time to mount the kind of surge his Augusta breakthrough proved he is still capable of.
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*Originally published on [Golf News](https://golfnews.global/article/rory-mcilroy-17-straight-pars-truist-r1-birdie-rescue). Visit for full coverage.*
