CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2014 Matt McCarty couldn’t stop making birdies.<\/p>\n
Rory McIlroy thought he was never going to make one.<\/p>\n
McCarty followed up four straight top 25 finishes on the PGA Tour with nine birdies at Quail Hollow to shoot an 8-under 63 on Thursday for a one-shot lead over Sungjae Im at the Truist Championship before the round was called because of rain.<\/p>\n
Im was on his final hole when the skies opened up. He, along with a handful of others, will complete the round on Friday.<\/p>\n
Playing for the first time since winning his second consecutive Masters more than three weeks ago, McIlroy looked rusty at times on a course where he has dominated, winning four times while setting several tournament scoring records.<\/p>\n
The world No. 2 player made 17 straight pars to open the round before finally getting a birdie putt to drop on No. 9 and celebrating by\u00a0sardonically thrusting both arms high in the air.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was thinking I can\u2019t remember the last time I played a round of golf and didn\u2019t have a birdie,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cI think I was like ‘just try to make one.’ I thought my chance had passed me by, but nice to see one putt go in there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of the 986 rounds McIlroy has played on the PGA Tour, only seven times has he failed to make a birdie \u2014 the last coming at the 2024 Masters.<\/p>\n
Quail Hollow\u2019s par-4, 539-yard ninth hole doesn\u2019t yield many, especially when a player misses the fairway as McIlroy did. But McIlroy lifted a 9-iron from the left rough 194 yards over the trees and found a way to get his ball to stop 15 feet from the hole.<\/p>\n
McIlroy finished with a 1-under 70, leaving him seven shots behind.<\/p>\n
Five players are three shots back at 5 under, including defending tournament champion Sepp Straka, Kristoffer Reitan, Nicolai Hojgaard, Harry Hall and Nick Taylor.<\/p>\n
Cameron Young is once again in contention, four shots back along with Tommy Fleetwood. Young was also on his final hole before the rain hit.<\/p>\n
Young, who turned 29 on Thursday, continues to take his game to a different level. After going 93 tournaments without a victory, he’s taken a quantum leap forward with three wins in his last 14 events, including last week at Doral.<\/p>\n
McCarty was dynamite with his putter all day. He followed up a 59-foot birdie putt on No. 16 with a 52-footer on No. 17 to best Quail Hollow’s difficult three closing holes known as the Green Mile.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve been playing some good golf for the last few weeks,\u201d McCarty said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t hitting it that great early today but you make a bunch of 50-plus footers and it kind of gets your day going. Hit it a lot better on the back nine and nice to get a few coming home for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
As much as McIlroy struggled, It was an even more frustrating day for his playing partners Justin Rose and Matt Fitzpatrick, who made up the featured group of the day.<\/p>\n
Rose shot 71 and became so irritated at himself that he dropped his club purposely after his follow-through on an approach shot. Then he held out his hands as he looked at the club, as if pleading with it to do its job.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Fitzpatrick bristled at his caddie after his fairway wood found the water on the par-5 seventh hole, leading to a bogey and a 3-over 74, leaving him 11 shots behind.<\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick\u2019s brother, Alex, fared much better, shooting 67.<\/p>\n
The tournament was delayed several hours after a storm Wednesday night and Thursday morning dumped more than two inches of rain on the course.<\/p>\n
McIlroy said it helped soften the greens, but he couldn’t take advantage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fairways are pretty wet and the golf course is playing very, very long which should play into my hands,” McIlroy said. \u201cI felt like I hit the ball well and hit enough good shots to be a little better than what I was, but I got three more days to try to catch up to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2014 Matt McCarty couldn’t stop making birdies. Rory McIlroy thought he was never going to make…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-655063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655063","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=655063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}