McIlroy said he has felt “a little bit flat on the golf course” since his Masters triumph in April, which saw him become the sixth player to complete a career Grand Slam of winning all four majors.
Naturally, he is keen to achieve further success, but knew from his slow start to Friday’s second round that any chance of collecting a second major of the year this week was gone.
With the shackles off a little, he produced a good finish to squeeze into the weekend action, but was unable to carry that into Saturday as he finished four over for the day.
McIlroy acknowledged anything short of a top performance would be punished on the course.
“It’s much easier when you’re on the cut line when you don’t really care if you’re here for the weekend or not,” he added of Friday’s effort.
“I was thinking, ‘do I want another two days here or not?’, but it makes it easier to play when you’re in that mindset.
“I’ve certainly experienced times when I haven’t played the way I wanted to. I actually feel like I’ve played OK this week, but it’s just the sort of golf course where the tiniest mistakes get penalised a lot and that’s how it’s felt.
“You’ve got to be on every single shot and if you miss a fairway, you’re going to be scrambling for par. If you miss your landing spot by a couple of yards, these greens repel the ball into rough and it just makes things very tricky, so you’ve got to be on your game.”