McIlroy glad to get the bad one out of way
DUBAI — with the good comes the bad and with the bad comes the good. perhaps, rory mcilroy may have reasons to believe in that.
the northern irishman had done all the right things on his return in abu dhabi except for the last day where tommy fleetwood ran away with it. here, in dubai, mcilroy had the majlis course sing to his tune for over two days and the start of the third.
but, like they say in cricket, the law of averages finally caught up with the former world no.1. it wasn’t quite the third round he had envisaged after briefly heading the leaderboard following the second round.
but then, the 28-year-old was glad to see the back of it and still keep pace with third round leader haotong li at the omega dubai desert classic. “yeah, hopefully that’s the bad one out of the way,” mcilroy said after a battling day on saturday.
“i didn’t get off to too bad a start, just a couple of loose ones. i missed a short one on four and made bogey on eight. that wasn’t too good. but to come back with a 5-under back nine was good. it was good to knock that birdie in at the last and stay within one of li.
“i’ll probably need to play a bit better tomorrow (sunday) to win, but you know, it’s two weeks into the season and i’ve given myself a second chance to win a tournament,” he added.
the way he went about his fightback put mcilroy in a good space. “i showed that even whenever i didn’t have my best stuff today (saturday), i was able to battle around and get in at a decent score. so, hopefully i have a bit of a better game tomorrow (sunday),” said mcilroy.
and talking of chances, mcilroy said his previous experiences of having won it twice before will come handy. “it would be great to put my name on that trophy for a third time. this is one of my favourite tournaments of the year, a place i’ve always done well at, some good memories. maybe that experience of winning a couple of times around here, you know, being in contention quite a lot, will help me tomorrow (sunday),” he signed off.
james@khaleejtimes.com