{"id":956228,"date":"2026-11-07T19:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T19:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/956228\/"},"modified":"2026-11-07T19:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T19:02:10","slug":"rory-mcilroy-two-shots-off-leader-jon-rahm-in-abu-dhabi-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/956228\/","title":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy two shots off leader Jon Rahm in Abu Dhabi \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/rory-mcilroy\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/rory-mcilroy\/\">Rory McIlroy<\/a> is continuing his charge for a record-equalling eighth <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/dp-world-tour\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/dp-world-tour\/\">DP World Tour<\/a> order of merit title with another impressive round at the Abu Dhabi Championship.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Northern Irishman managed eight birdies on his was to sign for a five-under round of 67, a double-bogey on the par-four 10th and a bogey on the 17th slowing his pursuit of leader Jon Rahm.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">McIlroy, on 16-under after three rounds, is two shots adrift of the Spaniard, with England\u2019s Tyrrell Hatton and Italy\u2019s Francesco Laporta in a share of second on 17-under.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">McIlroy is looking to make up ground in the penultimate tournament in the Race to Dubai, which wraps up after next week\u2019s Tour Championship. The Masters champion is third in the order of merit, behind Eugenio Chacarra and Patrick Reed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">McIlroy has now leapfrogged Reed in the projected rankings after the American carded a two-under round of 70 at Yas Links on Saturday for tied-51st. Chacarra retains the top spot after improving on his earlier rounds to sign for a five-under 67 for a share of 29th in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cI played some really good golf out there but I\u2019m also a little rueful,\u201d McIlroy said of his third round. \u201cI felt like I had some really good momentum coming off the back of the front nine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cJust the bunker shot came out a lot faster than I anticipated, and then over the green and it was sort of dead from there. I followed another poor shot with another mistake at the third and ended up making a mess and made double.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cBut I fought back and made birdies on the next four holes. So it was a good bounce back. Overall, a good day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cIf I can just limit the mistakes, there\u2019s enough good golf. There\u2019s enough birdies. There\u2019s enough opportunities. I can play a clean round of golf tomorrow, I won\u2019t be too far away.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy is continuing his charge for a record-equalling eighth DP World Tour order of merit title with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":956229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,118461,755,756,85],"class_list":["post-956228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dp-world-tour","tag-golf","tag-rory-mcilroy","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956228","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=956228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/956229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}