{"id":601683,"date":"2026-08-23T00:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T00:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/601683\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T00:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T00:54:09","slug":"rory-mcilroy-masters-champion-improves-to-go-second-at-bmw-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/601683\/","title":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy: Masters champion improves to go second at BMW Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

BMW Championship – third-round leaderboard<\/p>\n

-17 W Clark (US); -12 R McIlroy (NI), P Cantlay (US); -11 C Gotterup (US), G Woodland (US); -10 C Morikawa (US); -9 S J Im (Kor); -8 M McNealy (US), R Hisatsune (Jpn), E Cole (US), JJ Spaun (US)<\/p>\n

Selected others: -5 R MacIntyre (Sco); -4 A Rai (Eng), M Fitzpatrick (Eng); -1 J Rose (Eng), A Fitzpatrick (Eng); +2 T Fleetwood (Eng)<\/p>\n

Full leaderboard<\/a><\/p>\n

Rory McIlroy struck a five-under 65 to move to joint-second on day three at the BMW Championship.<\/p>\n

The Northern Irishman improved from a day two round of 69 that cost him his first-day lead, birdieing four of the last six holes to move up to second spot on 12 under. <\/p>\n

American Patrick Cantlay of the United States is level with McIlroy, having shot a 66 on Saturday, while his compatriot Wyndham Clark extended his lead at Bellerive Country Club to five shots with a 65.<\/p>\n

Clark double-bogeyed the opening hole but was superb thereafter, birdieing twice and then hitting an eagle on the eighth to go into the turn on two under.<\/p>\n

He then birdied four of the next five holes before bogeying the last, returning to the clubhouse on -17 overall.<\/p>\n

The home duo of Chris Gotterup and Gary Woodland sit on -11 overnight with compatriot Collin Morikawa on -10 and South Korea’s Im Sung-Jae on -9.<\/p>\n

Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre and American world number one Scottie Scheffler struck 68s to finish in a group of eight on -15, with England’s Aaron Rai and Matthew Fitzpatrick a shot behind.<\/p>\n

The experienced English pair of Justin Rose and Tommy Fleetwood both slipped down the field after over-par rounds. Rose shot 73, to leave him on -1 going into the final day, while Fleetwood’s 74 put him on +2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BMW Championship – third-round leaderboard -17 W Clark (US); -12 R McIlroy (NI), P Cantlay (US); -11 C…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-601683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601683","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=601683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}