Mark Cannizzaro

Mark Cannizzaro

Golf

Let’s give Rory McIlroy a mulligan

So this is what happens to your work performance when you’re having too much fun.

Riding his remarkable run of three consecutive victories — including the last two major championships — followed by two weeks of partying like a rock star, Rory McIlroy shot an uneven 3-over-par 74 in Thursday’s opening round of The Barclays at Ridgewood Country Club, the PGA Tour’s first leg of its FedEx Cup playoffs.

Coming from the No. 1 player in the world who has been on a Tiger Woods-like march for the last few months, the 74 was eye-opening, particularly when the players who have not exactly been lighting up the PGA Tour this year — such as Bo Van Pelt, Cameron Tringale, Hunter Mahan, Charles Howell III, Brendon de Jonge and Ben Martin — are atop the leaderboard after one round. McIlroy trails the pace-setting Van Pelt by nine strokes.

But this can be excused when you consider McIlroy’s Austin Powers-like adventures this summer.

Since mid-July, McIlroy has:

  • Won the British Open.
  • Won the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.
  • Won the PGA Championship.

Since his win at the PGA two weeks ago at Valhalla, McIlroy has:

  • Flown to New York with family and friends to party for a few days.
  • Flown to Northern Ireland for a day to celebrate with family and friends there.
  • Been the guest of honor at the season opener for Manchester United (his favorite football club) to show off the Claret Jug.
  • Flown back to New York to appear Monday on Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show’’ along with Woods, and then helicoptered over to Liberty National in Jersey City that evening to appear with Woods and Fallon at an elaborate Nike launch of its new irons.

The only things McIlroy has not done in the last week include filling in for Eli Manning at a Giants practice and throwing a touchdown pass to Victor Cruz, replacing Derek Jeter at shortstop for an inning at Yankee Stadium and playing one-on-one with Carmelo Anthony at the Garden.

In whatever spare time he has had, McIlroy also took a run in Central Park and even challenged actress and model Meghan Markle on Wednesday in Manhattan to the “Ice Bucket Challenge’’ for ALS.

Don’t hate McIlroy for losing his golf focus for a minute or two, though. Let him have his fun. He has earned it.

After his round Thursday, McIlroy downplayed the notion he was fatigued from all of his off-the-course activities, but he was honest about the fact he hadn’t spent a lot of recent time practicing. He even called Thursday’s letdown “inevitable after such a great few weeks.’’

“I wanted to enjoy it for a week,’’ McIlroy said. “I came here Monday morning, hit some balls, practiced pretty well. But I guess taking a week off and sort of getting back into it this week, I probably just needed to give myself a little bit more time. But I wasn’t going to do that. I was enjoying myself.’’

Good for him. Well deserved.

“I think it’s more to do with just not putting the adequate time into my game over the past week for obvious reasons,’’ he said, referring to his dodgy performance in the opening round.
With that, McIlroy said he was off to “grab a bite to eat here and go to the range … and work on a few things and really just catch up on some practice that I probably missed out on over the past week..’’

Whether that’s enough for McIlroy to make the cut and stick around for the weekend remains to be seen. The cutline is 2-over, which means he’ll need to shoot 2-under or better to play the weekend, something he’s surely capable of.

If McIlroy is going to be what Woods was during his reign of dominance, he’ll post a low number Friday and inch himself back into contention. For all of Woods’ greatness, the 79 wins and 14 majors, the most impressive component to his game was his consistency. He never missed cuts and was almost always at least close to contention.

Phil Mickelson, who knows a thing or two about the highs and lows that come at this rarified-air level of the game, spoke about McIlroy’s remarkable run as it related to his poor start Thursday and said, “After you win the British Open and the PGA I think it’s going to be hard to get up mentally for any more golf. That’s made his year right there. Anything after that is irrelevant, I think, and it will be difficult for him to get up [for another tournament].

“Now, he’s such a good player he’ll end up coming back [Friday] and [shooting] a low round I would anticipate. But there’s nothing he can do that is going to equal what he’s already done this year.’’