Two near misses disappoint McIlroy
dubai — Two near misses, that must’ve hurt Rory McIlroy.
It was turning out to be a sort of a dream comeback for the Northern Irishman after he finished tied for third at the Abu DHabi HSBC Championship in Abu Dhabi and slow-burning his way into contention for the Omega Dubai Desert Classic.
It was the scene of his first win on the European Tour as a 19-year-old upstart with frizzy hair. A second had come later in 2015, McIlroy much wiser and with a better game. But back-toback weeks of having come agonisingly close to lifting trophies and then to be left empty-handed was a bitter pill to swallow for the 28-year-old.
Englishman Tommy Fleetwood had ran away with it in Abu Dhabi and a little-known Chinese Haotong Li just about edged McIlroy out in Dubai.“Yeah, pissed off,” a disappointed McIlroy said.
“It was a couple of bad shots, a couple of poor decisions, a couple of mental errors, a few tentative putts out there, as well. I kept leaving myself in places where I couldn’t really give it a run at the hole because they were downhill, downgrain, downwind. So I didn’t really leave it in the best spots to be aggressive with my putts.
“But I tried until the very end. I made two good birdies. I made him win it in the end, which was, you know, all I could do, and he played very well on the way in, birdieing three of the last four. I just wish I could get a couple of those holes back,” he added.
McIlroy said the conditions were tougher at the Majlis Course as compared to the previous three days. “Conditions were tougher than they had been the last three days.”