{"id":220256,"date":"2025-10-17T12:59:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T12:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/220256\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T12:59:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T12:59:10","slug":"tommy-fleetwood-leads-in-india-rory-mcilroy-fights-to-keep-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/220256\/","title":{"rendered":"Tommy Fleetwood leads in India; Rory McIlroy fights to keep up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tommy Fleetwood<\/a> kept up his strong finish to the season by shooting an 8-under 64 to take a one-stroke lead at the halfway point of the DP World India Championship as Ryder Cup teammate Rory McIlroy<\/a> battled to stay in contention Friday.<\/p>\n

Over the past two months, Fleetwood has won the Tour Championship for his first PGA Tour title — picking up $10 million as the FedEx Cup champion in the process — and been the top points scorer at the Ryder Cup retained by Team Europe.<\/p>\n

Now the Englishman, up to No. 5 in the world rankings, is leading perhaps the most prestigious golf tournament ever to be staged in India after making eight birdies in a bogey-free second round to jump to 12-under par for the week.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

1 Related<\/p>\n

Fleetwood’s last birdie — from 8 feet at his last, No. 9 — left him clear of former Open champions Shane Lowry<\/a> (69) and Brian Harman<\/a> (65), who were tied for second place.<\/p>\n

“I feel like if I’m playing with Shane for the next two days, I’ll be doing something right probably,” said Fleetwood, who credited a post-round range session after his opening 68. “I played better than yesterday. I wasn’t happy with how I hit it towards the end yesterday, so I hit some balls afterwards and I felt like today the swing was in a better place.”<\/p>\n

A further three shots back was Ben Griffin<\/a>, a rookie for the Americans at the Ryder Cup, in a tie for seventh place at 8 under.<\/p>\n

McIlroy had back-to-back bogeys early in his back nine but responded by making birdie at four of his final six holes to shoot a second straight 69. He was at 6 under, along with fellow European team member Viktor Hovland<\/a> (67).<\/p>\n

As the No. 2-ranked McIlroy walked off No. 18 at the tree-lined Delhi Golf Club, he removed his cap and shook hands with India cricket great Sachin Tendulkar, a special guest for the tournament, at the back of the green.<\/p>\n

The pair had met previously at the 2023 DP World Tour Championship, and McIlroy told Tendulkar he was “looking forward to spending some time together.”<\/p>\n

The Associated Press and PA contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tommy Fleetwood kept up his strong finish to the season by shooting an 8-under 64 to take a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-220256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220256","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=220256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}