After hitting seven birdies in an opening 66 on Thursday, McIlroy cemented his place at the top of the leaderboard with a birdie at the par-four third. <\/p>\n
But the Masters champion hooked an iron into the water with his tee shot on the sixth before dropping another shot on the ninth. <\/p>\n
While he scrambled to save par on the long 13th, McIlroy incurred another penalty on the short 14th before bouncing back with a birdie at the 16th by sinking a 45-foot putt for birdie. <\/p>\n
Another wayward shot into water on the 17th led to a bogey and the 36-year-old finished with another dropped shot after he failed to get up and down from beside a rock to the right of the green. <\/p>\n
Playing with Ryder Cup team-mate McIlroy, Lowry mixed three birdies and two bogeys on the front nine but picked up shots at the 10th and 16th to sit alongside two-time DP World Tour winner Elvira. <\/p>\n
“I do quite enjoy it, the artistry of moving the ball around and hitting different shots,” Lowry told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
“We had a great group today. When you’re out there having a bit of fun it’s easier to play good golf so that attitude for the rest of the year and I’ll be pretty good.”<\/p>\n
It was a rough Friday for Fleetwood, however, as the Englishman failed to make a birdie or eagle in a round for the first time since the US PGA Championship last May. <\/p>\n
England’s Marcus Armitage carded a 70 and is two shots off the lead while South Africa’s Thriston Lawrence – who was third in 2024 – is alongside McIlroy at two under.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After hitting seven birdies in an opening 66 on Thursday, McIlroy cemented his place at the top of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-373473","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\/373473","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=373473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}