Despite struggling with his game, McIlroy once again showed his mastery of the Earth course with a three-under par 69 keeping the world No 2 way ahead in the Race to Dubai.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a struggle out there today,\u201d admitted McIlroy, who started with a bogey and avoided one on the par-five 18th with a brilliant up-and-down after he had fluffed his second shot from thick rough.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to battle a little more. The conditions were slightly tougher, as well, if you looked at the scoring yesterday compared to today. I missed a couple more fairways today.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I felt like I showed my scoring skills today, and, battled well and stayed patient, and got the ball up-and-down when I needed to,\u201d continued the Northern Irishman.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, to shoot 69, I\u2019m pretty pleased considering some of the spots that I found myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
England\u2019s Tyrrell Hatton (67), one of only two players who can stop McIlroy from winning a seventh Order of Merit crown, improved to sit in tied 11th place at seven-under.<\/p>\n
But Hatton will have to win the tournament and then hope McIlroy finishes outside the top-eight to have a chance.<\/p>\n
The other player in contention, England\u2019s Marco Penge (70) was way down at tied 44th place.<\/p>\n
Hojgaard started birdie-eagle and raced to six-under-par through his front nine, but could pick up only one more shot on the back nine with a birdie on the par-five 14th.<\/p>\n
The Dane, winner of the tournament in 2023, put himself in a good position adding a 65 to his opening round 67.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good to be back this year in a little bit of form,\u201d said Hojgaard, who failed to qualify last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of my favourite tournaments and favourite courses to play.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key was staying really patient again. Yesterday, was a really good round, and I felt like I actually might have played a little bit better today.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the golf course suits my eye. I really like it off the tees. I feel like it\u2019s a positional golf course as well. It\u2019s a mix of driver down to 4-iron. And it plays into my strength, which is mid-irons.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tournament has the richest purse on the DP World Tour \u2013 US$10 million \u2013 and the top 10 players also get a share of a US$6 million bonus pool at the end of the season.<\/p>\n
\u2013 With AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite struggling with his game, McIlroy once again showed his mastery of the Earth course with a three-under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[806,18239,10001,18509,18829,91582,4225,7491,36423,18830,78,194,101,38594,111,139,69,90,15148,18238,7798,10715,35138,75700,6926,213,15412,2563,61,208,102,377],"class_list":["post-135210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-as","tag-championship","tag-closer","tag-closes","tag-daniel","tag-dp","tag-dubai","tag-earn","tag-edges","tag-hillier","tag-in","tag-kiwi","tag-left","tag-mcilroy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-pace","tag-pga","tag-race","tag-remains","tag-rory","tag-rounds","tag-season","tag-sports","tag-spot","tag-title","tag-to","tag-tour","tag-with","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}