{"id":524852,"date":"2026-03-07T14:54:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T14:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/524852\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T14:54:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T14:54:14","slug":"rory-mcilroy-makes-late-rally-as-daniel-berger-stretches-lead-at-arnold-palmer-invitational","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/524852\/","title":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy makes late rally as Daniel Berger stretches lead at Arnold Palmer Invitational"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rory McIlroy<\/a> birdied four of his last nine holes, but still trails Daniel Berger<\/a> by nine shots at the halfway mark of the Arnold Palmer Invitational.<\/p>\n

The American stretched his overnight lead from three strokes to five as a second round 68 left him on 13-under-par at Bay Hill.<\/p>\n

Compatriot Akshay Bhatia<\/a> was five shots off the lead after a 66, while Sweden’s Ludvig \u00c5berg<\/a> was a shot further back alongside American duo Sahith Theegala<\/a> and Collin Morikawa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Berger started the day with a 25-foot birdie putt on the opening hole and carried the momentum with three more birdies on the back nine.<\/p>\n

After an opening 72, McIlroy was level par at the turn before picking up four shots in seven holes to move into a share of ninth – one ahead of world number one Scottie Scheffler<\/a>.<\/p>\n

England’s Tommy Fleetwood<\/a> made three birdies in his back nine to finish with a 60 and lie on one-over-par after flirting with the cut line.<\/p>\n

“Yesterday was really disappointing, because it was just an odd day where I was just, you know, crap,” Fleetwood told PGATour.com after the second round.<\/p>\n

“Last year I made the cut on the mark here. I played really well over the weekend. Just got to keep that in mind.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy birdied four of his last nine holes, but still trails Daniel Berger by nine shots at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-524852","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\/524852","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=524852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}