For 10 holes of his round, Rory McIlroy was like a guy down on his luck. He couldn’t buy a thing, for love nor for money.
And, then, like a magical swish of a wand, the hangdog look disappeared, at least for a time. The spark, when it came, was from out of nowhere, not from a birdie or an eagle, but rather from the unlikeliest of par saves.
On the second hole, his 11th of a tortuous start to this 105th US PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club, McIlroy’s travails seemed set to continue when his wedge approach went over the back of the green and down the slope and somewhere defied gravity to stop mere inches from the thickset greenside rough.
Those inches, though, enabled him to ask caddie Harry Diamond for putte …