Italian Molinari meanwhile put together a remarkable run of seven birdies in eight holes between the seventh and the 14th on his way to firing a seven-under 65.<\/p>\n
The 2018 Open champion, now ranked 418th in the world rankings, posted one further birdie in his round, with a solitary bogey at the 12th the only blemish on his scorecard, to lead by two from Swede Mikael Lindberg.<\/p>\n
It was 43-year-old Molinari’s lowest round on the DP World Tour since January 2024.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a long time. I’ve changed everything and then I’ve changed back,” said the 2018 Ryder Cup winner, who has not won a professional title since the Arnold Palmer Invitational seven years ago.<\/p>\n
“Not super unexpected but I wasn’t expecting a score like that. Last week I felt very rusty, so I was hoping it would be very good prep for this week.”<\/p>\n
Lindberg’s opening 67 included an eagle three at the third.<\/p>\n
Switzerland’s Joel Girrbach and South African JC Ritchie are one shot further back, with last week’s Dubai Invitational winner, Manuel Elvira, among a group of players tied for fifth on three under, which also includes American Patrick Reed.<\/p>\n
Having his first competitive outing of the year, defending champion, England’s Tyrrell Hatton, is one of seven players on two under, along with Ireland’s Shane Lowry.<\/p>\n
Lowry recorded five birdies and three bogeys as he began his bid to bounce back from an agonising conclusion to last week’s tournament at Dubai Creek Resort.<\/p>\n
A double-bogey at the last cost him the opportunity to potentially win the title on that occasion.<\/p>\n
Like his playing partner McIlroy, world number three Tommy Fleetwood has ground to make up after posting a 73. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italian Molinari meanwhile put together a remarkable run of seven birdies in eight holes between the seventh and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-423626","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}