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Rory McIlroy faced a significant setback at the RBC Canadian Open, as he stumbled to an 8-over 78 on Friday at TPC Toronto. This led to a missed cut with McIlroy finishing 9 over par, placing close to the bottom of the leaderboard. His performance was marred by a quadruple-bogey on his fifth hole, followed by multiple bogeys and a double.

Cameron Champ leads the tournament with an impressive 12 under par, while Andrew Putnam trails closely with a 10-under score. Canadian golfers Nick Taylor, whose playoff win in 2023 is featured in the tournament logo, and Richard Lee are part of a group at 9 under.

For McIlroy, this was the final event before the U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club. Despite a practice round at Oakmont earlier in the week, he struggled in Canada. "I'm going to have to do a lot of practice and a lot of work over the weekend at home," McIlroy stated, pointing out the urgent need to improve before next week's major tournament.

Particularly troubling was his performance with a new driver, which had been put in play after his previous driver was deemed non-conforming at the PGA Championship. In Round 2, McIlroy ranked 151st out of 153 players in strokes gained off the tee, and he fared poorly in other key metrics as well.

"Yeah, of course it concerns me," McIlroy admitted. "You don't want to shoot high scores like the one I did today. Still, I felt like I came here with a new driver thinking it was going to be good and solve some problems off the tee, but it didn't."

The fifth hole proved particularly challenging. After hitting his tee shot into the rough and his approach shot far beyond the green, McIlroy's provisional shot also overshot the target. He ultimately needed six shots to reach the green and two-putted, resulting in a quadruple bogey. Following this, McIlroy turned in 5-over 40 and continued to struggle on the back nine, narrowly avoiding a score in the 80s by playing his last four holes in 1 under.

Reflecting on his equipment issues, McIlroy said, "I went back to a 44-inch driver this week to try and get something that was a little more in control. But if I'm gonna miss fairways, I'd rather have the ball speed and miss the fairway than not."

This event marked McIlroy's debut at TPC Toronto, although he has won the RBC Canadian Open twice at other venues.