POOR RORY WON’T HARBOUR A GRUDGE
GOLF: PGA TOUR
RORY MCILROY will not rush back to the RBC Heritage Classic after recording his worst finish on the PGA Tour for nearly two years.
The Ulsterman ended tied 41st on the tight South Carolina course – 11 shots behind winner Webb Simpson in the rain-delayed event.
It was the lowest the world No.1 has finished since the WGC-HSBC Champions in October 2018.
Mcilroy (left), who had not played in Harbour Town since 2009, said: “Once I got here and I played the golf course, I sort of remembered why I haven’t been here for a while. It’s tough.
“It’s a lovely place. There’s other courses on tour that probably fit my game a little bit better, and obviously the week after the Masters is always a tough one.
“Guys like to come here and decompress, but my idea of decompression is not seeing golf clubs for a week.
“You had to hole a lot of putts, and I didn’t over the week.
“But I’m still pretty happy with how I played going into the next weekend in Hartford.”
Mcilroy, who will tee up at the Travelers Championship on Thursday, had recorded seven consecutive top-five finishes before a tied 31st at
FIVE of Essendon’s star players face 14 days in isolation after being identified as “close contacts” of Tyrone defender Conor Mckenna.
However, the Australian Football League has breathed a collective sigh of relief after Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) completed their contact tracing and decided not to take the draconian move of isolating the entire playing group.
Having saved the season from being shutdown a second time and possibly scrapped, the AFL’S attention will now turn to an appropriate punishment for Mckenna.
The DHHS are re-examining Mckenna’s positive COVID-19 test to determine if it was a false positive and if he initially caught the virus in Northern Ireland.
Mckenna remains asymptomatic three days after the coronavirus test that rocked the sport.
The AFL has conducted over 13,000 tests with no other positive finding but if the results are 99.9% accurate then 13 false positives could be expected.
Mckenna returned to Melbourne from Tyrone in mid-may alongside Meath’s Cian Mcbride and Armagh’s Ross
Mcquillan. The trio the Charles Schwab Challenge. He passed a second Covid-19 test after Nick Watney became the first PGA Tour player to fail one at a tournament.
Simpson birdied five of his last seven holes for a 64 to finish one clear of Mexico’s Abraham Ancer for his second PGA Tour title of the season.
The 2012 US Open winner moves up to second in the Ryder Cup rankings to guarantee his place in the American team.
Brooks Koepka (left) credited an emergency swing session with Butch Harmon – and a full trained together at a holiday home in Donegal during the lockdown and quarantined for two weeks in Melbourne on their return in line with Australia’s strict travel regulations.
Mckenna has since tested negative seven times.
Essendon chief executive Xavier Campbell (inset) said: “It’s a very new virus. We have seen examples of false positives and we have seen other examples where future testing has garnered greater information and insight.
“He has been to Ireland but he did test negative twice in quarantine and he has been tested five times since then. “There is an enormous amount of data and in many respects Conor’s case and the rigour that goes into testing may well present a really unique case for experts.”
Essendon officials have so far refused to publicly criticise Mckenna for attending five open house inspections and visiting his adopted family last week.
Mckenna breached the AFL’S strict off-field protocols primarily because he did not seek Essendon’s permission before leaving home.
He did not, however, breach the easing of coronavirus restrictions at the time in Melbourne.
The state of Victoria has since suspended the easing of restrictions following a spike in COVID-19 cases in the past few days.
Mckenna’s brother and brother’s partner, who share a rented home with him, have both tested negative.
If Mckenna is deemed to have inadvertently breached AFL protocols he is likely to only be suspended for one or two matches.
Overnight, the AFL has banned contact training for full group sessions for at least the next four weeks. recovery from his knee injury – for his best result of the year in what should have been US Open week.
The world No.3 missed three months last autumn and had struggled on his return before the lockdown.
But the double US Open winner had a session with the swing guru in Las Vegas and returned to shoot a final-round 65 – including nearly holing his drive at the 330-yard par-4 ninth – to finish seventh.
“Any time you can go see Butch, it’s going to help,” Koepka said.
“A lot of it was just trying to play so perfect.
“And this is the best my body’s felt in years. It just felt nice to feel something again.”