THE 154TH OPEN

July 16, 2026

Rory McIlroy

Mixed Zone

Q. What a day out there for you.

RORY McILROY: Yeah. I'll start with the positives. I drove the ball incredibly well. I took the golf course on off the tee. Obviously with the positions that I put myself in off the tee, I feel like I obviously should have shot a better score. Played the hard holes well. Birdied 13, 15 and 18 on the back.

The two bogeys on the par-5s wasn't great and I struggled the first two holes to get the speed of the greens. I felt like they were very inconsistent, just because some parts of the greens are still alive and growing and other parts have went really dead. It's like, you've got this -- sort of reminds me a bit of Pebble Beach when Pebble Beach gets like that for a U.S. Open. It's just hard to judge the speed sometimes.

Struggled with that early on. Sort of felt like I got it going a little bit, but yeah, just too many stupid mistakes. But every time I made a stupid mistake, thankfully I made a birdie to sort of keep myself in it.

Not too far away. Hopefully we'll get the better conditions tomorrow and maybe the greens are a little bit smoother in the morning. Go out there and shoot a good one and get myself right back in it for the weekend.

Q. We know you've won a major seven shots back after round 1 before. Are you confident of shooting yourself back into this tournament tomorrow?

RORY McILROY: Yeah, I think so. I think you can. If you look at the discrepancy between the scoring this morning and the scoring this afternoon, it looks like that's going to be flipped tomorrow with the conditions again. Hopefully I can take advantage of the more benign conditions in the morning and shoot one under par and get back in it.

Q. There's some rounds that are hard to analyze and maybe don't require analysis and go out in the morning and take the birdie on 18 as your cue to get going again?

RORY McILROY: Yeah, a little bit. I felt like I learned quite a bit today about how the course is playing, how the ball is reacting out of the first cut of rough. Definitely when it gets that burnt and that dry, it can sort of do some weird things. I feel like it exaggerates the spin quite a lot. If you're hitting a draw or hitting a fade, it seems to exaggerate the spin on the ball a lot. Happened to me a few times out there.

But I'm not going to go back to the house and analyze it too much tonight. Again, focus on the positives, which was I took it on off the tee and drove the ball very, very well, hit some really good shots. I made too many sloppy mistakes and just need to cut those out.

Q. What will you do when you go back to the house if you're not overanalyzing? What's your plan for this evening?

RORY McILROY: Sleep pretty much. Get some dinner, have a shower and get into bed.

Q. Did the short misses compound at all?

RORY McILROY: Yeah, I feel like I missed a couple early on that looked like they were going to break one way and they actually went another way, and then when you get the next one, you're over it and it's just very hard to trust that the ball is going to do what you think it's going to do. Then you maybe don't make quite as committed of a stroke.

It seems like when it gets like that on a day like today, you just keep leaving yourself four-footers. I left one to pretty much tap-in range on 9 to make a birdie. Then I missed three four-footers in the space of four holes, and that's a tough -- it's tough to get out of that and stay committed to what you're trying to do on the greens.

Q. It's a historic Open for Norway, three Norwegians for the first time in The Open. Do you have any thoughts?

RORY McILROY: Yeah, Norway is producing a lot of good players. Viktor, Kristoffer obviously won for the first time on the PGA TOUR this year. I know Kris Ventura as well who lives over in America. The Norwegian amateur team were always a good team whenever I was coming up and playing amateur golf.

Yeah, they're producing good golfers and good footballers as well and good tennis players. I'm pretty close with Casper Ruud, too. He loves golf. I love tennis. We see each other quite a bit.