After all the political and sporting trauma of his recent past, there was finally a day of real promise and progress for Rory McIlroy.
With 65 strokes in his first round at the US Open, the world No. 3 played some of his best golf courses in months to qualify for the third major of the season in an early battle with just four men on the higher rungs of the standings.
Top-seeded among them were Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele, who shared the absurd eight-under-par score after tying the record for the lowest round ever in a major with their matching loops of 62.
They were exceptional, although that American pair may have been a little apprehensive about the presence of Dustin Johnson, whose 64 gifts put him tied for third with Wyndham Clark.
A further back was McIlroy, and if we have to make a reservation about his performance, it would be how he slowed down on the back nine, after a torrid start to his round at the Los Angeles Country Club.
There was finally a day of real promise and progress for Rory McIlroy at the US Open
Rickie Fowler (left) and Xander Schauffele (right) shared the absurd score of eight under par,
He was five down through eight holes and was rapidly closing in on Fowler and Schauffele, whose pummeling of the North Course had taken place earlier in the day.
With 10 holes to play, it was quite possible that McIlroy would put up an even better score, but he lost pace with six consecutive pars, before a birdie on 15 was offset by a closing bogey.
After fighting for a wider cause for so long, and then being somewhat shaken by the romance of the PGA Tour with Saudi money, it was comforting that he recovered so quickly.
It was comfortably his best golf in the majors this year, with all but two greens hit within the rules via massive improvements off the tee and his approach play.
As always, it remains to be seen if the form will stick, but for the first time in a long time, it has a spring in its stride.
He teed off into afternoon golf in the company of pre-tournament favorite Brooks Koepka and got right into the swing of things with a massive 382-yard drive down the first fairway.
It’s long been known that McIlroy’s entire game tends to follow where his play off the tee leads him, and over the past few months, those have been some bad spots. This was more like old McIlroy with the big stick and his numbers reflected it.
He made a birdie on that opening hole, sank a 12-footer to go under two on the next, and another 20-foot vanished on the fifth.
McIlroy is three shots off the lead after playing some of his best golf in months on day one
McIlroy described himself as a ‘sacrificial lamb’ after defending Jay Monahan’s PGA Tour
It wasn’t until the sixth hole, a rideable and very well guarded par four, that he missed a target when he rolled the dice and shot into the thick greenside rough. He was in a tricky spot, with the ball buried deep in tall grass, but left with par.
A fourth birdie followed on seven when he nailed his tee shot on the par three to two feet and he also won a stroke on the par-five eighth, setting him up for a front-nine 30 – his lowest score at that stage of an important.
The flames began to die down on the way in with four straight pars and the difficulty surfaced on the 14th when, adjacent to what was once the Playboy Mansion, he jerked his drive a rough way to the left. It was his first bad hit off the tee all day.
He reached the par five in three and after making par with two putts over 15 yards, made a mid-range birdie on the short par three at 15.
On the 16th, McIlroy failed to hit the green in the rules for the first time in his round, falling a foot short on his approach, but carded a par about the time Johnson went through to seven under with one more hole to play.
Johnson failed to get up and down from a bunker to fall back to six-under before McIlroy recorded his lone bogey on the final par-three, playing himself into a thick greenside rough. He flopped the first chip and ultimately avoided a double bogey with a nine-footer.