{"id":543352,"date":"2026-07-10T21:09:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T21:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/543352\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T21:09:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T21:09:12","slug":"excited-mcilroy-eases-into-share-of-scottish-open-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/543352\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Excited&#8217; McIlroy eases into share of Scottish Open lead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rory McIlroy will head into the weekend at the Genesis Scottish Open in a share of the lead after shooting a second-round 66 on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>But while the Masters champion made steady progress to reach nine under at the Renaissance Club, it was a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/sport\/golf\/2026\/0710\/1582774-scheffler-run-of-78-made-cuts-ends-at-scottish-open\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">disappointing day for Scottie Scheffler in North Berwick<\/a>, as the world number one missed the cut.<\/p>\n<p>McIlroy sat alongside England&#8217;s Jordan Smith, who carded a day\u2019s best seven-under-par 63, and South Korean Tom Kim.<\/p>\n<p>McIlroy almost chipped in for an eagle at the first, settling for a birdie, before picking up three further shots to reach the turn in 31.<\/p>\n<p>He almost holed his approach to the 13th but then made his only significant mistake of his round as he missed the resulting par putt.<\/p>\n<p>The 2023 Scottish Open winner quickly made amends as he almost eagled the 14th and was left with a birdie that put him back into that three-way tie for first.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\">Rory drives the 14th green with a ROCKET \ud83d\ude80<\/p>\n<p>A two-putt birdie sees him regain a share for the lead \ud83d\udc4f<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/hashtag\/GenesisScottishOpen\" rel=\"nofollow\">#GenesisScottishOpen<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/hashtag\/RolexSeries\" rel=\"nofollow\">#RolexSeries<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/WFblE5wIfh\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/WFblE5wIfh<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/DPWorldTour\/status\/2075628470491586893\" rel=\"nofollow\">July 10, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>McIlroy said: &#8220;I thought I played well again. The wind definitely got up in the afternoon but I got off to a really nice start.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;By the turn the wind had got to its strongest and it was hard to get the ball close to the pins and we were all just making a lot of pars.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It would have been nice to be a couple better but it&#8217;s obviously another solid day and I\u2019m in a great position. I\u2019m excited for the weekend.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Smith surged into contention with a sparkling round that included a run of four successive birdies from the 11th.<\/p>\n<p>That left him one ahead of Matt Fitzpatrick, whose round of 65 featured a run of five straight birdies, and Australia\u2019s Min Woo Lee.<\/p>\n<p>Robert MacIntyre, the 2024 winner who was playing alongside McIlroy and defending champion Chris Gotterup, finished on seven under after a 66. Gotterup, who also won the John Deere Classic last weekend, joined him by carding 65.<\/p>\n<p>US Open champion Wyndham Clark and Danny Willett were among the players on six under.<\/p>\n<p>McIlroy will have England&#8217;s Matt Fitzpatrick (-8) for company in the second last group of the day on Saturday. The pair tee off at 3.24pm.<\/p>\n<p>The cut mark fell on two-under-par, which meant Tom McKibbin (67-71) squeezed through on the number but there was bad news for Lowry (level par) and last week&#8217;s US Senior Open champion P\u00e1draig Harrington (+4) who both will have the weekend off.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/sport\/results\/golf\/european-tour-and-pga-tour-1\/28855\/scottish-open-908487\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Scottish Open leaderboard<\/a><\/p>\n<p>                    <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy will head into the weekend at the Genesis Scottish Open in a share of the lead&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-543352","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\/543352","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=543352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}