CRASH OF THE TITANS
Rory ready to reignite No 1 battle with Spieth
JORDAN SPIETH knows how to make an entrance. How about using your first regular European Tour event to declare that winning back the Ryder Cup for the US is your No 1 goal for the season?
Or raising fears of another Rory McIlroy misadventure by crashing into the back of the Northern Irishman while the pair were racing about on GolfBoards?
The sponsors of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship like to involve the players paid appearance money in some lark before the event and this year saw the world No 1 and No 3 — plus Henrik Stenson and Rickie Fowler — riding on these motorised scooters.
‘Thank goodness his ankles stayed on board,’ said Spieth, recalling the moment he collided with McIlroy as the pair scooted down one fairway at the maximum speed of 14mph.
Goodness, can you imagine the headlines if his ankles hadn’t, and McIlroy had suffered an injury akin to the ligament damage he suffered playing football last summer that caused him to miss The Open?
‘He almost took me out,’ said McIlroy with a huge grin.
After the literal collision there will be one of the metaphorical kind this morning as the two rivals have been drawn alongside Fowler for the opening round. It’s the start of a year that will see them mentioned in the same breath on hopefully many occasions, but Spieth made it clear the greatest victory he could gain this season would be while playing for his country rather than himself.
Asked where winning the Ryder Cup ranked in his list of priorities, he said: ‘It is a huge goal of mine and possibly at the very top of the list. We are tired of hearing that changes need to be made and about the past. We’re ready to believe in a younger, more hungry team going forward.
‘What I mean by that is there’s less scar tissue. We’ve got guys like Brooks Koepka, Justin Thomas and Patrick Reed, who are young and fiery and have had good success in team environments in their amateur days.
‘We know the Ryder Cup is a different animal but we have a lot of momentum at this point. If we continue what we’ve been doing over the past year we’re going to get in that team room and be very excited about who is sitting next to us.’ The Masters and US Open champion demonstrated with his victory in Hawaii two weeks ago his determination to continue his wonderful golf of last year. But McIlroy has finished runner-up in this event on four occasions and has targeted another fast start to reduce the gap between himself and Spieth at the top of the world rankings.
‘I’ve made no secret of the fact I want to get back to being world No 1, and I’d like to do it as quickly as possible,’ he said. ‘I know if I finish second or higher I can leapfrog Jason (Day, the world No 2).’
Like Spieth, McIlroy is coming here after a win in his last start, the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai last November.
Inevitably it will be the McIlroy-Spieth-Fowler threeball that will garner much of the attention, but there are others capable of causing a stir.
Among them is Russell Knox, the Scot who did precisely that with his victory in the WGC-HSBC Champions in China in November, and England’s rising quartet — Danny Willett, Andy Sullivan, Matt Fitzpatrick and Chris Wood.