Rory McIlroy hasn't just established himself as one of the best golfers of his generation over the past 18 years, the six-time major champion is also one of the more thoughtful interviews on the PGA TOUR.
He was neither of those things Thursday.
The struggle was very real for McIlroy over his final stretch at Aronimink, bogeying five of his final six holes to crash down the leaderboard and post a dismal 4-over 74.
It took him just four letters to describe his performance after the round.
"Shit," McIlroy said in the media center.
The area of McIlroy's game he was particularly angered by is usually his strong point, as the 37-year-old was a mess with the driver. McIlroy said earlier in the week that there wasn't much strategy off the tee around the Philadelphia-area course, with his guess that most players would just send driver as far as possible down each hole.
That strategy - or lack thereof - backfired Thursday, with McIlroy hitting just 35% of fairways and sitting 118th in strokes gained off the tee with the afternoon wave still on the course.
"I started missing fairways. I missed the fairway right on 4, the fairway right on 6, the fairway right on 7, fairway right on 9," McIlroy said, going over his struggles. "From there, it's hard - you know, I didn't have great angles either. Then obviously you start missing it just off the edges of these greens, it gets tricky."
Thursday wasn't exactly out of the ordinary for McIlroy this year. He's struggled to hit driver throughout the 2026 season, even in his back-to-back win at the Masters.
"It's been a problem all year for the most part. Yeah, I've sort of got, like I miss it right, and then I want to try to correct it. And then I'll overdo it, and I'll miss it left," McIlroy said. "It's a little bit of back and forth that way. So that's pretty frustrating, especially when like I pride myself on driving the ball well."
While he was able to get away with a wayward driver at Augusta National, Aronimink isn't as forgiving off the tee, with thick rough framing the fairways throughout the course.
McIlroy does have plenty of time to correct his errors for Friday, as his threesome with Jon Rahm and Jordan Spieth is off in one of the last tee times of the afternoon.
