DORAL, Fla. — Courage is a questionable word to toss around when you’re talking about golf, because at the end of the day that’s all it really is: Golf.
But for an elite player of Rory McIlroy’s status, chasing major championships and the world’s No. 1 ranking, it does take a certain leap of faith to take a completely revamped putting style and put it into play for the first time at one of the biggest tournaments of the year.
McIlroy, No. 3 in the world, was paired with Jordan Spieth, No. 1, and Jason Day, No. 2, for the first two rounds of the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Trump Doral. Had his new putting style — a change from the conventional grip to left-hand low — failed, he could have been boat-raced by his two competitors.
Instead, McIlroy walked off the Blue Monster on Friday having outclassed both of his playing partners and closest rivals — and he did so with magnificent putting in the second round, shooting a 7-under 65 to stand at 8-under, two shots off the lead held by Adam Scott.
Spieth, who shot 72 on Friday, is 3-under. Day, who shot 74 Friday, is 2-over.
McIlroy, en route to his opening-round 71, took 33 putts. He shaved 10 putts off of that number Friday and one-putted 11 greens.
“It’s funny,’’ McIlroy said of the switch, “I’ve been playing it around in my head a little bit about making the switch and the one thing that I was sort of worried about was the ‘McIlroy copying Spieth’ [perception].’’
Spieth, who putts left-hand low, tweaked McIlroy earlier this week, saying, “You’ve gone to the dark side, I see.’’
McIlroy used the left-hand low technique in his rookie year on the European Tour in 2008, and he’s used it as a drill while practicing to take his right hand out of the stroke. That familiarity allowed him to be comfortable bringing it into play. That familiarity and the poor scores he had been posting.
McIlroy, who missed the cut at last week’s Honda Classic and was ticked off about it, said earlier this week this was not going to be a fly-by-night experiment, that he would not abandon it after a bad round or two.
“I don’t think it takes that much courage,’’ McIlroy said. “I mean, in my mind, it couldn’t really have gotten any worse. So why not make a change? And the change is feeling very comfortable at the minute. As I said at the start of the week, I’m willing to stick with it for as long as I can.’’
McIlroy’s bold and proactive move might end up winning him the tournament by Sunday night. This is what the best players do. It’s the reason they become great. Because they are unafraid — of failure or success.
A backdrop to McIlroy’s change this week has been Scott, who had the greatest successes of his career using the “broomstick’’ anchored putter, on the verge of winning for the second week in a row with the short putter. Scott was forced to make the change when the governing rules of golf banned the anchored putter beginning in 2016.
Phil Mickelson, too, has been putting with the claw for his short and medium-length putts and using a conventional grip on his long putts.
So McIlroy is not alone in his search for the right — that is, winning — formula.
“All of us out here, we’re good enough to make anything work, as long as you believe in it and you trust it and you work hard enough at it,’’ McIlroy said.
McIlroy easily could have been discouraged after his opening round Thursday, when he three-putted the par-5 eighth hole and then took double bogey on the ninth — his final hole of the day. But he stayed the course, patience being the formula over knee-jerk overreaction.
By contrast, on Friday McIlroy closed out his round with a 20-foot birdie putt on No. 18 to get to two back of Scott’s lead.
“Even though I didn’t hole as many putts [Thursday], I didn’t doubt what I was doing for one second,’’ McIlroy said. “I knew that this was the right way forward for me.’’
