Rory McIlroy savoured \u201ca pretty cool year\u201d after adding a second Irish Open title to his Masters win. The world No 2 completed the career grand slam with the triumph at Augusta in April and added to that by winning his home open for the second time with a thrilling playoff victory against Joakim Lagergren.<\/p>\n
McIlroy had to eagle the 72nd hole just to take it to a playoff after Lagergren\u2019s own stunning eagle at the 16th. After the first two extra holes were tied in birdie fours, Lagergren found the water hazard third time around to allow McIlroy to win it with two putts.<\/p>\n
McIlroy, who also triumphed in this event at the same venue in 2016, said: \u201cI just feel so lucky that I get to do this in front of these people. The support has been amazing all week. So happy I could play the way I did this week and get the win.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a putt last year at [Royal County Down] to force a playoff with Rasmus [H\u00f8jgaard] and it just missed on the high side, so it felt like (the eagle at the 18th) was a little bit of redemption. I wanted to be aggressive with it – such a cool feeling, cool moment for that to go in, and that gave me a chance in the playoff.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just felt like it was who was going to blink first. Joakim hit a poor second shot in on that playoff hole and that opened the door for me, and I\u2019m just so happy to win my second Irish Open.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a Ryder Cup to come at Bethpage later this month, McIlroy said: \u201cTo do what I did earlier in the year and then to come home and win my national Open, no matter what happens for the rest of the year, that\u2019s a pretty cool year \u2013 2025\u2019s going to be one of the best, if not the best, of my career.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we\u2019re not finished yet, I\u2019ve got a big week next week at Wentworth [the BMW PGA Championship] and then obviously everybody\u2019s looking forward to the Ryder Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n
McIlroy and Lagergren had been in a five-way tie for the lead on 14 under when the final group turned for home on Sunday.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Angel Hidalgo, second overnight after a stunning 63 on Saturday, finished in a tie for third on 15 under with Rafa Cabrera Bello, who sparked his challenge into life with a hole in one at the third. A third Spaniard, Angel Ayora, was fifth alongside the third-round leader Adrien Saddier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy savoured \u201ca pretty cool year\u201d after adding a second Irish Open title to his Masters win.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-126159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}