WGC Mexico: Report cards for ten of the top PGA TOUR stars
By Bill Felber
Save for having seen Johnson’s mastery with his own eyes, Rory McIlroy would probably be wondering how he lost. Statistically he played a consistently elevated game.
The Northern Irishman usually gains about 1.2 strokes off the tee, another half stroke approaching greens, plus final half stroke on or around those greens. In Mexico City, he bettered himself in all four of those categories. He was 1.61 strokes better than the field average off the tee, eight-tenths of a stroke better in his approaches, three-quarters of a stroke better around the greens and seven-tenths of a stroke better on them.
His four-round total of 268 was 16 under par and more than two standard deviations better than the field average, yet he still lost…and by five.
The problem didn’t lay in McIlroy’s ability to cash birdie opportunities. He made 25 of them – three more than the winner — plus one eagle.
Big errors, and magnified ones, provided the difference. Take the par 5 sixth…please! McIlroy played it in three over par, an unforgivable performance by a world-class player on a par 5. Johnson played the same hole in two-under. For the tournament, McIlroy played thee par 5s in -3, four strokes worse than Johnson.
Accuracy had a lot to do with it. McIlroy hit only 36 of 56 fairways, and in apparent demonstration of cause-and-effect hit just 51 of 72 greens, seven fewer than Johnson.