For a long time on Sunday it looked like McIlroy would also win the final event of the DP World Tour’s season, holding a two-shot lead midway through the round before faltering down the stretch with bogeys on the 12th and 16th holes seeing him drop out of the lead.<\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick, meanwhile, was serenely putting together a bogey-free round of 66. Three birdies in the opening five holes were followed by a run of eight pars and three birdies in his final five holes, including one on the last as he surged into the lead.<\/p>\n
That left McIlroy and his playing partner Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen needing to hole eagle putts on the last to force a play-off. Neergaard-Petersen missed from around 20 feet. <\/p>\n
McIlroy learned the line and holed his 15-footer. And, as he did at the Irish Open in September, roared with delight.<\/p>\n
But unlike in Ireland, McIlroy was unable to win the play-off, handing Fitzpatrick the advantage by hitting his tee shot into water and then failing to get up and down from a greenside bunker as he posted a six.<\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick, who played the hole more conservatively, was also off the green after three shots, but played a delightful chip and tapped in for a five.<\/p>\n
“It means the world,” said the beaming Englishman who overcame poor form early in 2025 to qualify for the Ryder Cup team and finish the year on a high.<\/p>\n
“I struggled at the start of the year and to turn it round in the summer and have the Ryder Cup I did is hard to top, but the way I played today, there was one bad shot all day. <\/p>\n
“I’m so proud of myself. The effort everyone puts in behind the scenes. What a feeling.”<\/p>\n
More to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a long time on Sunday it looked like McIlroy would also win the final event of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-142977","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}