It was a tournament to forget for Rory McIlroy at the RBC Canadian Open, as he was one of the big names to miss the cut in Toronto.
Carding a one-over-par 71 on Thursday, his eight-over-par 78 on Friday ranked as the second worst, in terms of strokes gained, in his career, with the five-time Major winner losing 8.471 shots to the field.
The reason for the poor showing can be traced back to the driving, where McIlroy hit just 46.43% of his fairways, as well as losing an uncharacteristic 2.2 shots off the tee.
Heading into the US Open next week at Oakmont, a course where fairway-finding plays a pivotal part in success, McIlroy revealed that the drop off in driving is a concern.
Trialing a new driver in the bag after his old gamer was deemed non-conforming by the USGA at the PGA Championship, McIlroy stated: "Of course it concerns me.
"You don't want to shoot high scores like the one I did today. Still I felt like I came here obviously with a new driver thinking that was going to be good and solve some of the problems off the tee, but it didn't.
"Obviously, going to Oakmont next week, what you need to do more than anything else there is hit fairways. (I'm) Still sort of searching for the sort of missing piece off the tee.
"For me, when I get that part of the game clicking, then everything falls into place. Right now that isn't. Yeah, that's a concern going into next week."
Starting his second round with four straight pars, McIlroy's day unraveled at the par 4 fifth, when an octuple bogey eight put him five-over-par for the tournament.
A bogey at the eighth was then followed by another at the 10th and a double bogey at the 11th. Although he found birdies at the 16th and 18th, bogeys at the 13th and 17th put the five-time Major winner eight-over for the round and nine-over for the tournament.
"I think there's still learnings that you have to take from a day like today. I still -- look, even though the last two days didn't go the way I wanted them to, there's still things that I can take from it, and there's still things that I can learn," claimed McIlroy.
"I'm going to have to do a lot of practice and a lot of work over the weekend at home and try to at least have a better idea of where my game is going into next week."
As of writing, it's unclear as to whether McIlroy will stick with the TaylorMade Qi35 driver that was put in the bag pre-tournament, or whether he will return back to the Qi10 that was used to win The Masters.
What we do know is that, prior to the RBC Canadian Open, McIlroy revealed he went back to a 44-inch driver set-up, and that, between now and the US Open next week, he will be "testing quite a few drivers over the weekend."
