The Open: Weary Rory McIlroy and Padraig Harrington admit they’ve lost their mojos

IT’S not just Rory McIlroy’s golf ball that has been all over the place at Lytham, it’s his emotions, too. From the serenity of Thursday to the dejection on Friday and onwards to yesterday when he shot 73 and spoke later with a weariness that was both understandable and worrying, writes Tom English.

“I’m frustrated,” he said, before repeating himself just in case we hadn’t picked up on how he was feeling. “My game was good and then all of a sudden I just started not to trust it on Friday and it sort of spiralled from there.” Asked if he’d lost his mojo, he replied: “Yeah, a little bit. But to be honest, I’m getting used to it. The last few weeks haven’t been great. I just have to keep working hard and hopefully it will turn around some time.”

McIlroy is five over for the championship and is utterly irrelevant to what is going to happen in today’s final round, his mind already drifting ahead to the year’s final major, next month’s PGA. He was out early yesterday with Padraig Harrington in an all-Irish two-ball that was about as hot as a spent match. The pair of them knew that unless they got off to a stunning beginning then it was hardly worth the effort. They didn’t – and from early on you could tell that their focus wasn’t exactly what it might have been.

At least Harrington signed for a level-par 70, but speaking afterwards he came across like a man who didn’t know what country he was in, never mind how to fix the glitches in his game. Not for the first time he offered us a window on his complex mind. “I got on the range on Friday and got something in my head and just really, really struggled today. I could play some great range golf, but I wasn’t taking it to the golf course. It was a big struggle. I didn’t show much trust, faith or confidence in anything out there.”

Harrington spoke about the Ryder Cup qualification race and about how time is running out to get into the team by rights. He mentioned that he’ll be playing in the Barclays in America when that event doesn’t count for Ryder Cup points, a fact of which he was unaware. He walked onwards still thinking that the Barclays gives him a chance to hoover up some points, but it doesn’t. Don’t be too surprised if the news comes out soon that he’s playing the Johnnie Walker in Gleneagles instead.

He was on a roll with this angst stuff. Few golfers do it better. Harrington is so brutally honest about his own game that he lays it all on the line for all to see. How much did he struggle out there? “I really struggled.” Really, really? “Really, really. I struggled badly. I wasn’t settling on any good thoughts. I kind of messed with [my] head a bit. By the time we got to the 16th tee we’d made one birdie between us, me and Rory, we were bouncing off [the walls]. There was no rising tide.”

Tipped by many to figure prominently here, Harrington has been a significant disappointment, along with Lee Westwood, tipped by everybody to figure at the top end of the championship and who went out yesterday morning in the second from last group, with Tom Watson, and shot 71 for four over.

If Harrington was a perplexed man, so, too, was Westwood. “Nothing has been that good this week,” he said.

A question from the floor: Did Watson give him any encouragement in his now epic, and continually forlorn, quest for a major championship. “We didn’t talk about that,” was the brief response that didn’t invite a follow-up query about how much all this disappointment is impacting on the mind of the major-less Englishman.

“I haven’t holed enough putts,” he said of his old bugbear, the short stick. “You need to have your game in shape to play one of these weekends.”

Last weekend, Tony Jacklin, the last Englishman to win the Open in England when taking the Claret Jug here at Lytham in 1969, tipped Westwood to win.

Another year slips by and the record remains.