Despite struggling with his game, McIlroy again showed his mastery of the Earth course with a three-under par 69, keeping the world No 2 way ahead in the Race to Dubai.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a struggle out there today,\u201d admitted McIlroy, who started with a bogey and avoided one on the par-five 18th with a brilliant up-and-down after he had fluffed his second shot from thick rough.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to battle a little more. The conditions were slightly tougher, as well, if you looked at the scoring yesterday compared to today. I missed a couple more fairways today.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I felt like I showed my scoring skills today, and, battled well and stayed patient, and got the ball up-and-down when I needed to,\u201d the Northern Irishman continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, to shoot 69, I\u2019m pretty pleased considering some of the spots that I found myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
England\u2019s Tyrrell Hatton (67), one of only two players who can stop McIlroy from winning a seventh Order of Merit crown, improved to sit in tied 11th place at seven-under.<\/p>\n
However, Hatton will have to win the tournament and then hope McIlroy finishes outside the top eight to have a chance.<\/p>\n
The other player in contention, England\u2019s Marco Penge (70), was way down in a tie for 44th place.<\/p>\n
Hojgaard started birdie-eagle and raced to six-under-par through his front nine, but could pick up only one more shot on the back nine with a birdie on the par-five 14th.<\/p>\n
The Dane, winner of the tournament in 2023, put himself in a good position, adding a 65 to his opening round 67.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good to be back this year in a little bit of form,\u201d said Hojgaard, who failed to qualify last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of my favourite tournaments and favourite courses to play.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key was staying really patient again. Yesterday was a really good round, and I felt like I actually might have played a little bit better today.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the golf course suits my eye. I really like it off the tees. I feel like it\u2019s a positional golf course as well. It\u2019s a mix of driver down to 4-iron. And it plays into my strength, which is mid-irons.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tournament has the richest purse on the DP World Tour \u2013 US$10 million ($17.6m) \u2013 and the top 10 players also get a share of a US$6m bonus pool at the end of the season.<\/p>\n
\u2013 With AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite struggling with his game, McIlroy again showed his mastery of the Earth course with a three-under par…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[10960,64,63,9663,164770,164771,788,71261,5951,123736,9403,755,161514,4717,8835,2351,39408,2652,119385,39497,3173,578,39404,164772,161,85,91365,8821,319,245,3605,1720],"class_list":["post-285217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-as","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-championship","tag-closer","tag-closes","tag-daniel","tag-dp","tag-dubai","tag-earn","tag-edges","tag-golf","tag-hillier","tag-in","tag-kiwi","tag-left","tag-mcilroy","tag-on","tag-pace","tag-pga","tag-race","tag-remains","tag-rory","tag-rounds","tag-season","tag-sports","tag-spot","tag-title","tag-to","tag-tour","tag-with","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285217","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=285217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}