Rory McIlroy shot a one-over round of 72 on a “rollercoaster” opening day at the Australian Open at Royal Melbourne.<\/p>\n
The Masters champion, who won this tournament in 2013, had an up and down round which included five birdies and six bogeys in tricky conditions with strong winds.<\/p>\n
His playing partners Adam Scott and Min Woo Lee both finished two under for the day, while Australia’s Elvis Smylie, New Zealand’s Ryan Fox and Mexico’s Carlos Ortiz are in a three-way tie for the lead on six under.<\/p>\n
Scotland’s Cameron Adam, appearing at just his second tournament as a professional, is two shots behind the leaders.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old missed the cut on his professional debut at last month’s Australian PGA Championship but has started strongly in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
He hit three birdies on the front nine and added a further two on his way back to the clubhouse before dropping a shot on the par-three 16th to sign for a 67.<\/p>\n
McIlroy started his round on the back nine with a birdie on the 10th, but bogeys at the following two holes set the tone for his round.<\/p>\n
“Every time I made a birdie or two, I made a bogey or two,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It felt like one of those days – what side of par am I going to finish on, under or over?<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t terrible. I hit it in a couple of bad spots and had a couple of early three-putts as well.<\/p>\n
“It’s tricky conditions and not like anyone is getting away out there, so I limited the damage and hope the conditions are a little bit better tomorrow.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy shot a one-over round of 72 on a “rollercoaster” opening day at the Australian Open at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-298935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}