Portugal Colonial - McIlroy back to the drawing board to solve driving woes

"Shit," McIlroy said.

Driving woes the world number two thought had been put behind him roared up again as the six-time major winner from Northern Ireland admitted his aggravation.

"I'm just not driving the ball well enough to give myself enough scoring opportunities," McIlroy said.

"That's pretty frustrating, especially when I pride myself on driving the ball well. I just need to try to figure it out. I honestly thought I had figured it out."

McIlroy, however, found his form in practice and tuneup events came to nought under major pressure.

"Once I get under the gun, it just seems like it starts to go a little bit wayward on me," McIlroy said.

McIlroy struggled off the tee last month in his victory at the Masters, notably on the final hole where he found pine straw on an adjacent hole and scrambled to salvage a bogey for the triumph.

On Thursday at Aronimink, McIlroy began bogey-birdie on the back nine, then made 10 pars in a row before closing with five bogeys in his last six holes, including the final four in a row.

"I started missing fairways," McIlroy said. "It's hard. I didn't have great angles either. Then obviously you start missing it just off the edges of these greens, it gets tricky.

"I felt like I did OK... then I just got on that bogey train at the end."

McIlroy said the right pinky toe issue that caused him to cut short a Tuesday practice round was not a factor in the poor performance.

"It has been a problem all year for the most part," McIlroy said of his swing issues. "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. It's a little bit of back and forth that way."

McIlroy found Aronimink harder than he expected when out of position.

"I got a couple of lies today that were particularly bad. The one on the 10th hole starting off, that's as bad as I've seen.

"There certainly is a penalty for missing the fairway, probably more than what I anticipated."

While McIlroy was well back, no one was pulling away from the field, a fact McIlroy blamed on windy weather.

"I wasn't expecting it to be as windy as it was. It's the breezy conditions that are sort of making the scoring what it is," he said.

"It's hard to get the ball close. Some of the pins are tucked away. Probably just seeing a lot of guys hit it to 20 and 30 feet. They're good shots. It's just hard to make a lot of those putts."

L.Mesquita--PC