Paul McGinley looks back at Rory McIlroy's early exit from the PGA Championship at Baltusrol and assesses what the four-time major champion can do to get back on track.
We all know Rory McIlroy has all of the talent in the world, but he is at a new level for his game and he's going to have to reassess how he's going to go about it.
We were initially full of admiration for him at the 18th with Day and Mickelson playing so conservatively, as he took out the driver and ripped it up the middle of the fairway.
The hard work was done for McIlroy on that hole and he knew that. He got a bad lie after his second, which was unfortunate, but then he really should have chopped it up to 30 feet and two-putted for par.
It seemed to be one mistake after another from there and he ended up with a six, which was a huge blow for him and he'll be absolutely heartbroken by that finish.
There's a time for reflection for Rory now, as he's not the young new kid on the block anymore and is one of the more experienced players here.
If you want to be the best player in the world, you've got to deal with situations where players are out-putting you, like we saw Jason Day do today.
It's one of the frustrations of the game if you're playing well but not particularly putting well and the other guys are.
We talk about resilience and all of the mental attributes the great players have had and Rory has shown them in the past, which is what we need to see him start going back to and showing again.
A lot of it is confidence, as it's not like he's overly weak in any particular area of his game. His putting may be the weakest area of them all, but it's not as if he's yipping putts or it's off-the-scale bad.
He is reaching a different level of his career where the guys coming up behind him are really closing the gap and maybe overtaking him. Rory will have to reassess how he's going to go about his game and maybe change a couple of things.
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