Rory McIlroy said he was taking it “hour by hour” before deciding whether to defend his Players Championship title at Sawgrass on Thursday due to a back problem.<\/p>\n
McIlroy, who withdrew from the Arnold Palmer Invitational on Saturday before his third round, completed a short practice session on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The world number two is scheduled to tee-off at 5.42pm Irish time on Thursday and when asked if he was committed to playing, he told a press conference “we’ll see”.<\/p>\n
He said: “It\u2019s better. It\u2019s better than it was. I hit up until a six-iron on the range there and it felt OK.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ve got about, I don\u2019t know, is it 20 hours until I tee-off, or until I\u2019m supposed to tee-off (on Thursday)? So, yeah, we\u2019ll see. I\u2019m taking it sort of hour by hour. But it feels better. That\u2019s all I can say.<\/p>\n
“I couldn\u2019t stand to address the ball on Saturday morning on the range at Bay Hill, and it\u2019s obviously better than that.<\/p>\n
“So, yeah, probably a game-time decision, but all indications are pointing in the right direction, so hopefully a good night tonight. The drugs are working wonders, and then just keep it going from there.”<\/p>\n
The reigning Masters champion last dealt with significant back issues in 2023, when he recovered sufficiently to score four points for Europe in their Ryder Cup victory in Rome.<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old, who made rounds of 72 and 68 at Bay Hill before the back issue flared up, had only withdrawn mid-competition once before in his PGA career, back in 2013 at the Cognizant Classic at the Palm Beaches.<\/p>\n
He added: I wouldn\u2019t even call it pain. I would say just more like sensitivity. Like even just hitting balls there for a little bit, just feel like my muscles around the area just getting a little bit, like, fatigued.<\/p>\n
“My right adductor started to cramp a little bit. But it\u2019s fine; it\u2019s expected. But more like sensitivity rather than pain.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy said he was taking it “hour by hour” before deciding whether to defend his Players Championship…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-341570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341570","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=341570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}