Rory McIlroy is nine shots behind leader Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen ahead of the final day of the Australian Open at Royal Melbourne.<\/p>\n
The Masters champion, who won this tournament in 2013, shot a three-under 68 in the third round and is now five-under par in joint 24th.<\/p>\n
McIlroy was hoping to build on a strong finish to the second round when he made three birdies in his last four holes.<\/p>\n
However, a bizarre double-bogey on the second hole hindered his start after the world number two was unable to move a banana skin beside his ball.<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old then added two birdies, four pars and a bogey on the front nine.<\/p>\n
From the 10th hole, Northern Ireland’s McIlroy registered four birdies.<\/p>\n
Denmark’s Neergaard-Petersen carded a 66 to move 14-under and two shots clear. <\/p>\n
Australia’s Cameron Smith also shot 66 and sits joint second with Si-Woo Kim and Carlos Ortiz on 12-under. <\/p>\n
“It was sort of a double whammy – it was in the tough grass and under a banana skin, but I shouldn’t have been there in the first place” McIlroy said when asked about the second hole.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t get off to a great start, but I played well from there.<\/p>\n
“I am probably going to be too far behind to challenge tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
Scotland’s Cameron Adam, appearing at just his second tournament as a professional, is four-under par in joint 29th with fellow Scot David Young in the same position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy is nine shots behind leader Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen ahead of the final day of the Australian Open…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-301962","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\/301962","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=301962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}