PGA Tour<\/a> stop in Florida. Rather than pursue a second Arnold Palmer Invitational win, McIlroy headed across the state to his home in West Palm Beach, where he will rest and take further medical advice before his planned arrival at Sawgrass, in the north of Florida, at the start of the week. McIlroy is due to undertake a Players press conference on Wednesday morning, when a fitness update will now be the key theme.<\/p>\nThis marks just the second time in McIlroy\u2019s PGA Tour career \u2013 and the first since 2013 \u2013 that he has withdrawn from an event. He encountered back problems before the 2023 Tour Championship but played, finishing fourth. McIlroy\u2019s exit continued the theme of high-profile departures from Bay Hill. Those who had missed the halfway cut included Justin Thomas, Justin Rose, Shane Lowry and Keegan Bradley.<\/p>\n
Those who remained in the field encountered a one-hour storm delay from shortly before 3pm on Saturday. The disruption means Daniel Berger, the leader, will have to return early on Sunday morning to complete his third round.<\/p>\n
\u2018Golf\u2019s a game that kind of beats you up,\u2019 said Scottie Scheffler. Photograph: Matt Slocum\/AP<\/p>\n
Scottie Scheffler\u2019s hopes of a third Arnold Palmer victory bit the dust on the 18th hole, where he found the water with his second shot from thick rough. Scheffler has cut a frustrated figure at various points this week but denied the Bay Hill test was too fierce, coming days before the PGA Tour\u2019s marquee event at Sawgrass. \u201cI\u2019ve handled it well in the past,\u201d said the world No 1. \u201cI think we get beaten up but golf\u2019s a game that kind of beats you up anyway. Out here the margins are just so small.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rain changed the green speed significantly. They went from basically dead to somewhat maybe alive. I would say early in the round and really pretty much Thursday and Friday there wasn\u2019t a lot of friction on there. I think the rain created a little bit of friction to where your ball was more rolling, I think, instead of kind of skidding is how I would describe it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Viktor Hovland\u2019s 67 left him well placed for a Sunday surge. Hovland\u2019s European Ryder Cup team-mate Sepp Straka is even better placed, his 66 moving him to nine under.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy is confident of defending his Players Championship title from Thursday despite withdrawing from the Arnold Palmer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-465696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465696","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=465696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}