Two days after confiscating a heckler’s phone, Rory McIlroy spent his opening round at the Players Championship wrestling with his own devices. It says much for his powers of recovery that he won the skirmish.
Summing up how poor he was off the tee, consider one statistic: of 14 fairways, he hit only four, with the rest largely blocked out to the right. A month out from the Masters, there will be a nagging concern that this is his second straight week of struggles with the greatest weapon in his bag.
