Rory McIlroy enjoyed a strong showing in Dubai on Saturday.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n
Rory McIlroy<\/a> is the joint leader of the DP World Championship after the third round in Dubai.<\/p>\n The Northern Irishman could yet cap a seventh Race to Dubai crown — putting him only one behind Colin Montgomerie<\/a> — with another title after a strong finish on Saturday.<\/p>\n After birdieing the first, McIlroy endured frustration before picking up three shots over the final five holes with birdies on 14, 15 and 18.<\/p>\n That moved him to 13 under par, level with Dane Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen<\/a>, who also posted a four-under round, and one shot ahead of a group of six players, including Tyrrell Hatton<\/a>.<\/p>\n McIlroy said on Sky Sports: “I got off to a good start, I hit two great shots into the first, two great shots into the second. I missed a two-and-a-half, three-footer on two, three-putted that, and I feel after that I sort of let that affect me a little bit, especially on the greens, for the next few holes.<\/p>\n “But I stayed really patient, gave myself plenty of opportunities, didn’t hole that much but I knew there was a few chances coming in and it was nice to take advantage of those. Overall, a bit of battling day, the conditions were tricky enough, but happy to shoot the score that I did.”<\/p>\n – Justin Thomas has surgery to relieve pain in back, hip; to miss start to ’26 Hatton, who shot a second straight 67, is just about in contention for the Race to Dubai but he would need to win on Sunday and hope McIlroy tumbles out of the top eight.<\/p>\n McIlroy appears unlikely to lose too much sleep, saying: “I’m in a better position than him. I’m focused on myself. If I go out and play the golf that I know I’m capable of, especially around this golf course, I know that I’ll be OK.<\/p>\n “It would be an amazing way to end the season. I’ve put myself in position to try to get another win here. I certainly could have coasted into these couple of weeks and enjoyed myself but the Race to Dubai is important to me and it’s important to me to try to get a little bit closer to Monty.”<\/p>\n Hatton is one of four English players in the tie for third along with Tommy Fleetwood<\/a>, Matt Fitzpatrick<\/a> and Laurie Canter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rasmus Hojgaard shot a seven-under-par round of 65 to join them, overtaking his brother Nicolai, who was the overnight leader but is now two shots adrift following a disappointing 73.<\/p>\n Ryder Cup stars Justin Rose<\/a> and Ludvig \u00c5berg<\/a> are also on 11 under on a stacked leaderboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy enjoyed a strong showing in Dubai on Saturday.\u00a0Getty Rory McIlroy is the joint leader of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-287695","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\/287695","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=287695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
–<\/a> Linn Grant, Grace Kim lead The Annika as Nelly Korda makes move<\/a><\/p>\n