Mcllroy looks for return to form

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  • July 30, 2016

Rory Mcllroy has struggled at the majors in 2016, and the Ulsterman continued his poor form at the PGA Championship this week, where he missed the cut.

In the second round of the final major of the year at Baltusrol, Mcllroy shot a one-under par 69, but after Thursday's birdie-less 74 he just had too much to do and missed the cut by one stroke.

"I've hit the ball really well this week and I'm walking away not playing the weekend," said Mcllroy. "It's really disheartening. I need to go back to the drawing board and see where we go from here."

The 27-year-old McIlroy has won four major titles, which include the 2012 and 2014 PGA championships, but in the last two years he has not threatened in the sport's big ones.

At the US Open he missed the cut, but managed to share fifth at the Open Championship two weeks ago, and 10th at the Masters, which is the one title he needs complete his career grand slam.

But Mcllroy is more focused on fixing the problems he has with is putting than checking his past glories or future goals.

"Tee to green was good, but it was just pathetic when I got onto the green." Mcllroy said. "I just need to do a lot of work."

He will need to alter the vacation plans he has before the end of season PGA playoffs.

"I was planning on taking two weeks off and then practicing the week before Barclays," he said. "I'll still take two weeks off from tournaments, but I'll have to see what practice schedule looks like. I need to do something."

Mcllroy, who is currently ranked fourth, ended with a bogey at the par-five 18th to miss the weekend, when a par would have been good enough for him to qualify for the weekend.

"I thought I needed to make four, so that's what I was trying to do," Mcllroy said. "I think if you had to give anyone else in this field my tee shots this week, they would have been up near the top of the leaderboard. It just shows you how bad I was around the greens."

Open Championship runner-up Phil Mickelson, managed to make the cut even though he had his own troubles.

He saw that Mcllroy was having trouble, but he is sure that they are only temporary.

"We all have periods where we have mental blocks on the greens," Mickelson said. 

"Right now he's just so tentative through impact. He's just not confident. You can just tell."

"You watch him with a driver and it's the sweetest thing you can imagine. It just goes through effortlessly with so much speed and power, and the ball just flies so long and true with such a tight flight pattern. He's just not striking his putts with the same confidence as he is his driver."

"It's not that he's not capable. He's just having a period where he's not feeling it. He will get it back."

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