HE admitted he had given up on winning the tournament after just two days but a fifth-place finish at Royal Troon still represented a decent return for Rory McIlroy in his first appearance at the Open since winning it two years ago. Twelve strokes behind the leader and eventual champion Henrik Stenson at the start of the final day, there was little prospect of the Northern Irishman collecting a second Claret Jug but a round of 67 again demonstrated his capabilities as he finished the best of golf’s so-called Big Four. He will surely be a force to be reckoned with when the USPGA gets underway at Baltusrol in 10 days’ time.

“I feel with the conditions that I faced this week I played pretty well,” he said. “There were a few mistakes in there, and if I could take back anything it would probably be the first nine holes on Saturday. I didn't get off to the greatest of starts so I feel like I've done pretty well this week considering everything.

“After the second day I was never going to win this golf tournament. Look what the guys have done. There's no chance of me getting to that score. The goal was to finish as high up the leaderboard as I could this week. I was going out there today with the goal of trying to get world ranking points, Race to Dubai points, and FedEx Cup points. That was my goal this weekend. I sort of forgot about the Claret Jug and just tried to focus on finishing as high as I can, and felt like I did that pretty well today. As I said, I can be positive about my game going into the last major of the year.”

McIlroy felt there was almost a greater expectation among the media for him to win a first major in two years than he was placing on himself.

“Look, I want to win,” said the Northern Irishman. “I want to play well. I think you guys are more desperate for it to happen than I am. But I'm happy with everything. I'm happy with where my game's at. All I can do is keep plugging away. I feel like it's definitely heading in the right direction. Bar the missed cut at the US Open, my results have been decent the last few times I've played. I won at the Irish Open and finished fourth at Memorial. I had the missed cut but then finished third in France and a top 5 finish here. So it's not that much wrong.

“I'm playing well. I'm driving the ball great. I think that's a big thing, especially with the PGA coming up. The PGAs are usually if you can drive the ball well, you'll do well, and I've had success in that tournament before so I'm really happy with that. Obviously I've missed a few short putts this week, but I'm not really putting that down to anything. I think I just need to do a little bit of work in and just maybe just be a bit more confident over them. But tee to green was good, and I can only be positive going into Baltusrol, really.”