Rory McIlroy remained confident of getting back into contention at the Open after beginning his challenge at Royal Birkdale with a frustrating two-over-par 72.
A stone-cold putter cost the Masters champion as he missed numerous opportunities on the Southport links and ran up six bogeys.
He repaired some of the damage with four birdies, including on the 18th, and having faced the most difficult conditions of the first day before finishing at 8.43pm, believes he can bounce back.
The world number two, who trails surprise leader Jackson Suber by seven shots, said: “There were just too many stupid mistakes – but every time I made a stupid mistake, thankfully I made a birdie to sort of keep myself in it.
“I’m not too far away. If you look at the discrepancy between the scoring this morning and the scoring this afternoon, it looks like that’s going to be flipped tomorrow with the conditions again.
“Hopefully I can take advantage of the more benign conditions in the morning and shoot one under par and get back in it.”
McIlroy missed three putts from inside four feet and was 104th in the putting statistics.
And he was literally brought to his knees at the par-five 17th where, after hooking his approach into the gallery and then flying the green into a bunker, he contorted his stance to splash out to eight feet – only to miss for a bogey.
He at least finished on a positive with a brilliant approach from 198 yards to five feet and finally sank a short birdie putt.
He said: “I left one from pretty much tap-in range on nine to make a birdie. I missed three four-footers in the space of four holes and that’s tough.
“But I’m not going to go back to the house and analyse it too much. I’ll focus on the positives, which were I took it on off the tee and drove the ball very, very well, hit some really good shots, played the hard holes well.”
McIlroy will have to defy recent history to recover and claim a second Open title and seventh major overall, which would officially make him the most successful European golfer of all time.
Although he did win last year’s Masters from seven shots back, each of the last 26 Open champions have been within five of the lead after round one. The last player to come from further back was Mark O’Meara in 1998 although, interestingly, that was at Birkdale.
McIlroy found himself two over after seven having failed to get up and down at the par-three fourth and two-putted from inside four feet at the short but tricky seventh.
He missed a three-footer at the next – this time for birdie – but finally got one to drop after driving the green at the downwind, 415-yard ninth to turn in one over.
Back-to-back bogeys at the start of his back nine halted any momentum before a 24-footer dropped at the 13th for a second birdie of the day.
He made a complete mess of the two par-fives – having holed a 12ft birdie at the 206-yard 15th – but salvaged something late on.
