Rory McIlroy hit a drive so bad it wound up in a neighboring pool
- Rory McIlroy hasn't been playing his best golf lately.
- On Wednesday, McIlroy got off to another rough start at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play.
- At the 5th hole, McIlroy found an unlikely water hazard after his wayward shot wound up in a pool.
Rory McIlroy got off to another rough start at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play on Wednesday.
Facing off against Englishman Ian Poulter, McIlroy could not find his swing and wound up losing the match in a 6&5 rout.
McIlroy's lack of control was on full display on the fifth hole, where his drive off the tee went so wayward it found the bottom of a swimming pool neighboring the golf course. While there's plenty of water hazards dotting the course at Austin Country Club, this was not one of them.
The poor tee shot led to another lost hole for McIlroy, who found himself down three to Poulter through just five holes. While he would win back two of the next three, McIlroy lost holes 9-13 to put Poulter up six with five holes left to play.
Match over.
McIlory has been pretty open about struggling to find his game of late, telling reporters earlier in March that he had lost his swing while chasing speed early in the season.
"Probably the swing issues and where it all stems from, probably like October last year, doing a little bit of speed training, started getting sucked into that stuff, swing got flat, long, and too rotational,'' he said. "Obviously, I added some speed and am hitting the ball longer, but what that did to my swing as a whole probably wasn't a good thing, so I'm sort of fighting to get back out of that. That's what I'm frustrated with.''
McIlroy admitted that after seeing the dominance that Bryson DeChambeau brought with his newfound power, he looked to see if he could do the same.
"I'd be lying if I said it wasn't anything to do with what Bryson did at the U.S. Open,'' McIlroy said of DeChambeau. "I think a lot of people saw that and were like, 'Whoa, if this is the way they're going to set golf courses up in the future, it helps. It really helps.'"
While DeChambeau has done fairly well to control his power, McIlroy is still clearly trying to get the ball to go straight. Hopefully, McIlroy finds his game soon, but it's likely not sitting at the bottom of a Texas pool.