STRAFFAN, Ireland \u2014 Rory McIlroy bogeyed two of his last three holes and faded to a 1-under 71 in the first round of the Irish Open on Thursday in his latest homecoming.<\/p>\n
The world No. 2, who attracted the biggest galleries of the day at The K Club, was looking to sharpen up his game a few weeks out from the Ryder Cup in Bethpage Black, where the Northern Irishman is expected to be Europe\u2019s key player once again.<\/p>\n
McIlroy said he was encouraged at how he played \u2014 he birdied four of his first nine holes after starting at No. 10 \u2014 and performed \u201cbetter than what the score reflects.\u201d His finish hurt him most, missing the green at Nos. 7 and 8 and failing to get up and down for par.<\/p>\n
\u201cGame feels pretty good,\u201d McIlroy said, adding: \u201cJust a matter of being more efficient with the scoring.\u201d<\/p>\n
McIlroy, who was in Northern Ireland in July for the British Open at Royal Portrush, was five strokes off the clubhouse lead held by Nacho Elvira, whose 66 was bogey-free and contained birdies in four of his last six holes.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard was one shot ahead of Bernd Wiesberger, Daniel Brown and Adrien Saddier.<\/p>\n
Aaron Cockerill, from Stony Mountain, Man., is tied for 16th after an opening-round 70.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s Shane Lowry, another member of Europe\u2019s Ryder Cup team, was playing in front of his home crowd and birdied three of his last six holes to shoot 69.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STRAFFAN, Ireland \u2014 Rory McIlroy bogeyed two of his last three holes and faded to a 1-under 71…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-121751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}