St. Jude Championship in Memphis last week<\/a> \u2013 his first start since he finished tied for 40th in the Open Championship.<\/p>\nThe six-time major champion was tied for the lead on Aug 20 at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis, Missouri, with a trio of US Open winners \u2013 Gary Woodland, Wyndham Clark and JJ Spaun \u2013 and Chris Gotterup.<\/p>\n
World number one Scottie Scheffler, who was at his imperious best on the way to victory in Memphis last week, was meanwhile far from the logjam at the top.<\/p>\n
Scheffler hit just six of 14 fairways and 11 of 18 greens in regulation on the way to a two-over par 72 that featured five bogeys and left him tied for 44th \u2013 just one stroke better than the last-placed trio in the field of 50.<\/p>\n
Northern Ireland\u2019s McIlroy, who claimed a second straight Masters titl in April, picked up two birdies on the front nine and four coming home, including back-to-back birdies at 17 and 18.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my style of golf course. I do well on these golf courses, they\u2019re big, they\u2019re long. You can get away with missing some tee shots at times,\u201d said McIlroy, whose birdies included a 10-footer at the par-five eighth after he recovered from a wild tee shot to the left.<\/p>\n
A pinpoint tee shot at the par-three 13th left him a seven-footer for birdie, and he took advantage of a big drive at 15 with a four-foot birdie putt.<\/p>\n
He reached the green in two at the par-five 17th and comfortably two-putted before rolling in a nine-footer at 18 for a final flourish.<\/p>\n
McIlroy said work since last week had him feeling he was \u201cat least back on the right path\u201d with his game and his swing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s certainly a work in progress. Days like this are encouraging, obviously. There\u2019s still a lot of work to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodland had set an early target with his six-under effort highlighted by an eagle at the 11th, where he holed out from 99 yards out in the fairway.<\/p>\n
Eagle bonus<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just trying to get it past the hole,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit elevated so we couldn\u2019t see it go in. I knew I hit it nice, but when you see the crowd jump up, that was definitely a bonus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodland, the 2019 US Open champion, was seven-under after a birdie at 17 but gave a stroke back after finding a greenside bunker at 18.<\/p>\n
Spaun, the 2025 US Open winner, also reached seven-under, moving into the solo lead with his seventh birdie of the day at 17. But he was in the right rough off the tee at 18 on the way to a bogey.<\/p>\n
Clark, who won his second US Open title in June, joined the group on six-under with five of his six birdies on the back nine, including three in a row to finish.<\/p>\n
He launched the run with a 38-foot birdie putt at 16, two putted for birdie at 17 and drilled a six-footer at the last.<\/p>\n
Gotterup had three birdies on each side to complete the leading quintet, who were one stroke clear of Japan\u2019s Ryo Hisatsune and England\u2019s Matt Fitzpatrick.<\/p>\n
Alex Fitzpatrick, Ludvig Aberg, Michael Thorbjornsen and Jacob Bridgeman were two off the lead on four-under. AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2013 Rory McIlroy fired an impressive six-under par 64 to headline a five-way tie for the lead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-591216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}