Why Rory is Letting The Big Dog Sleep in India

This week, Rory McIlroy is playing in India for the first time in his career at the DP World Tour India Championship. Beyond Rory and other high-profile Ryder Cup stars like Shane Lowry and Tommy Fleetwood, also in the field, the course itself is becoming a big part of the story.

The reason being, Delhi GC is by modern standards an extremely narrow golf course that doesn't provide any room to bail out off the tee (I mean, just check out the 18th hole below!). And, even at its longest, it plays less than 7000 yards from the tips.

Once you factor in how far modern golfers hit the ball, and how wide a dispersion cone can get past the 300-yard mark on a mishit, Delhi GC has a lot of players thinking differently about how they will approach course management this week, with the most talked-about player being Rory McIlroy.

Even as one of the best drivers of the golf ball in history, this week Rory and his caddie Harry Diamond don't feel that the juice is worth the squeeze, and with the course yardage and Rory's ability to hit it plenty far with his 5-wood and 2-iron, he has made the unique decision to keep his driver out of the bag.

The strategy seemed to pay off because he shot a respectable round of 3-under par (69), which has him 5 shots back of leader Shane Lowry.

Rory's Not The First

From a historical sense, this is certainly the first time Rory has left a driver out of his bag, but he's not the first pro to do it on a big stage.

At one point, European pro Eddie Pepperell chose to have a TaylorMade mini driver as his longest club in the bag, and even more famously, Phil Mickelson employed this tactic twice in his career. Once with shockingly terrible results at the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, and the other in 2013 at the Open Championship, where he went on to win.

What makes the Phil part of the story so contrasting is that it wasn't that long before in 2006 when he showed up to Augusta National for the Masters with not one but two drivers in the bag. One designed to help fade the ball, and the other designed to be easier to draw. As odd as it was, it helped Phil win that week and prove that there are a lot of different ways to stratagize off the tee.

As for Rory this week in India, the longest club in his bag is a 5-wood, and from there he is playing a TaylorMade P760 2-iron and a then the rest of his set 4-iron down to wedges.

It's not a strategy I would suggest for most amateurs, but when you're Rory McIlroy and can hit your 5-wood around 280 yards off the tee, I think that might be plenty.