Rory McIlroy refuses interviews at The Open as major drought to enter 10th year

Rory McIlroy’s Major Championship drought looks certain to extend into a tenth year after the World No 2 got stuck on a soggy Open moving day at Royal Liverpool. A Saturday 69 was respectable but respectable was not what McIlroy needed or wanted on an afternoon when he needed to hit the accelerator hard.

Instead, he could only find neutral as a promising third round fizzled out in the rain leaving a familiar feeling of what might have been. The brooding clouds over the North Wales hills across the Dee Estuary reflected the prevailing mood. McIlroy’s face was a picture of disappointment as the last birdie chance of many slid by on the final hole.

If he is to pull off a repeat of his 2014 Open win at Hoylake he will have to pull off the round of his life and hope the cards fall his way up ahead of him. It would need a lightning strike of the kind which transported Paul Lawrie to the Claret Jug at Carnoustie 24 years ago. Lawrie reeled in a 10-shot deficit going into the final round to win The Open from 13th place.

Even if Brian Harman turns out to be another Jean van de Velde there are too many good players ahead of McIlroy for him to muscle his way through. It is not going to happen. Just as it hasn’t happened at golf’s big events for so long for McIlroy. Another one is about to drift away.

The 34-year-old’s refusal to conduct the usual media conference to promote The Open ahead of the championship was intended to prevent any distraction but silence has not proven to be golden for him. He refused to speak again on Saturday night after his round, preferring to head to the putting practice green.

He has pretty much tried everything now barring playing left-handed to try to snap the streak. To no avail. This was a good chance. A soft Royal Liverpool in the form he was in having won the Scottish Open last week should have been set up for him but it just has not happened.

He has not hit enough fairways and he has certainly not holed enough putts. Three under par after three rounds, he will most probably freewheel to another top-10 finish in a Major Championship. If he does so it will be his 20th since he won the last of his four Majors at the 2014 US PGA Championship.

For some players of inferior talent that would represent commendable consistency; for McIlroy it makes for a dispiriting sequence of near-misses. The crowds around Royal Liverpool were desperate to see a McIlroy run on Saturday but it turned out to be a damp squib.

The frustration was that it started so well. Fast out of the blocks, he gave himself five birdie looks in his first five holes. To huge roars from the waterproofed Wirral galleries, he grabbed three of them. But there was a long and loud grunt of frustration as a good opportunity slid by on hole number four. He had seen the score Jon Rahm had posted and knew it was out there for him too.

The difference though was that the Spaniard – his playing partner for the first two rounds – was able to start what he finished. McIlroy had to scramble hard at 10 and 11 to avoid bogeys. He did so but the errors were starting to creep in. At the 12th his wedge approach from the light rough 120 yards out rolled agonisingly down a run-off and the weak recovery chip brought his first bogey of the day.

The air was seeping out of the balloon. Inviting birdie putts at the 15th and the 17th rolled by and the shoulders slumped. After his tee shot at 18 skirted dangerously with the internal out of bounds, he gave himself yet another opportunity from 12 feet. The groan from the grandstands said it all.