Steve DiMeglio

USA TODAY Sports

McIlroy starts with bogey and goes south from there

First round leader shoots 43 on first nine on Friday

McIlroy making a habit of bad second rounds

DUBLIN, Ohio – A day after firing a spectacular 9-under-par 63 to grab the first round lead of The Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, Rory McIlroy was equally spectacular on Friday.

Going in the wrong direction.

McIlroy, who broke off his engagement with tennis star Caroline Wozniacki last week and then rallied with a final-round 66 to win the BMW Championship, the European Tour's flagship event, had his sore left knee wrapped in a protective sleeve.

But he quickly became unraveled as he began his second round under brilliant skies with a tee shot into heavy rough to the left of the 10th fairway at Muirfield Village, which resulted in a bogey.

After momentarily righting his ship with a birdie from close range on the difficult par-3 12th, his round quickly sunk. He hit three trees on the 13th and made double bogey, found the water guarding the 14th green and made double bogey, then double hit a chip shot near the 15th green that led to a third consecutive double bogey.

He did salvage a par on the 16th when he holed a bunker shot. Trouble was, he had left his first bunker shot on the hole in the bunker. He ended his disastrous front nine with another bogey on the 18th to shoot 43, marking the fourth consecutive PGA Tour event for McIlroy in which he has shot 40 or higher for nine holes – all coming in the second round.

McIlroy gathered himself on the front nine with a 1-under 35 to mercifully end his round of 78, which left him 3 under for the tournament and dropped him off the front page of the leaderboard.

"The knee's okay. It was a little sore this morning on the range because if I just keep hitting balls continuously and just keep torquing it, then it's going to get sore. But out on the course it was fine," McIlroy said. "The painkillers kicked in. I felt it a little bit, but didn't really bother me too much."

What bothered him was missing fairways – he missed 10 of 14.

"That was a big thing. I didn't realize how thick the rough was until I got in it today," he said. "It's thick. I just kept missing fairways and making it tough for myself. And obviously that little three‑hole stretch -- 13, 14, 15 -‑ didn't help. Take those three holes out of it, then it wouldn't actually have been that bad a day. But as I was saying yesterday, these little runs I'm getting on where it gets away from me, I was able to avoid that last week. Not so much this week."

But his week isn't over.

"Even though I had such a bad day, I'm still in with a chance depending on what the guys do this afternoon," McIlroy said. "So going into the weekend, not exactly where I want to be, but could be worse. I am hitting a lot of good shots and I played the front nine solidly. Just need to get back out there tomorrow and get off to a good start. That's exactly what I didn't do today.

" … I didn't get off to a good start and sort of made things tough for myself. But it seemed like anything that could sort of go wrong did go wrong out there with having the double hit on 15 and hitting a couple of branches on 13, which were actually a couple of decent shots. … So hopefully that's the bad run out of the way and I can play some good golf on the weekend and get myself back in with a shot."