St. Andrews, Scotland ? One bad round. One completely, utterly awful round.

Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy waves to the crowd as he walks to the 18th green Sunday at St. Andrews, Scotland.

Take that away, and Rory McIlroy’s walk up the 18th fairway Sunday at the British Open might have been triumphant.

“I couldn’t help but think about Friday going up the last hole there,” McIlroy said after shooting a 68 that moved him into a tie for third. “You know, if I had just sort of stuck in a little bit more on Friday and held it together more, it could have been a different story.”

McIlroy finished eight strokes behind winner Louis Oosthuizen. Take away the 80 he posted Friday and give him a score in the 60s — as he had the other three days — and it explains why he wasn’t thrilled with his best finish at a major.

McIlroy’s best finish at the British Open was a tie for 42nd three years ago. He failed to make the cut at either the Masters or the U.S. Open this year.

“I knew that I had a good chance coming in here, and it was nice to sort of be there for a while,” he said. “I’m still a bit disappointed, to be honest, because I know if I could have played anywhere decent on Friday, I could have been a lot closer to the lead. I’m not saying that I could have got to 17 under, but I definitely could have been contending for second place, anyway.”

With Lee Westwood, the No. 3 player in the world still nursing a bum leg, McIlroy arrived at St. Andrews as the best hope to end the United Kingdom’s losing streak at its own open. No golfer from Britain or Northern Ireland has hoisted the claret jug since Paul Lawrie in 1999, and Nick Faldo was the last Englishman to win, claiming the last of his three Open titles in 1992.

McIlroy tied the major-championship record by shooting 63 in pristine conditions Thursday morning. But with the wind howling and the Old Course showing its considerable bite, he blew up with the 80 on Friday afternoon.

“When you start off shooting 63 in any golf tournament, you fancy your chances going into the next three days,” McIlroy said. “It just so happened to be it got very windy on Friday, and I just didn’t deal with it very well. … I hadn’t played in wind like that for a long time. So it was a bit of a new experience.”

No player had ever shot such a high score after going so low the day before in a major tournament. As the strokes piled up, McIlroy began looking his age, rolling his eyes, slumping his shoulders, kicking the grass. It could have started him on a major meltdown, the kind that can linger for months.

Instead, McIlroy went back to his hotel room, ordered room service and went to bed. On Saturday, he came out and shot a 69.

Young gun: The older players can relax. Jin Jeong won’t be taking their money for a few more months.

The only amateur to make the cut at this British Open tied for 14th, a finish that would have earned him almost $88,000 if he was a professional. Though Jeong obviously has the game to compete with the big boys, he said he has put his plans to turn pro in September on hold.

Red, white and blue: The British Open leaderboard looked like it was borrowed from a European Tour event.

The Americans have owned the claret jug lately, having won seven of the last 10 coming into St. Andrews.

But the champion Sunday was Louis Oosthuizen, a South African. The rest of the top five hail from England (Lee Westwood and Paul Casey), Northern Ireland (Rory McIlroy) and Sweden (Henrik Stenson).