McIlroy switches his focus to Portrush

RORY McILROY last night admitted defeat in his quest to land the Scottish Open title — but insisted his game is sharp enough to contend for the Claret Jug at Royal Portrush.

McIlroy carded a 68 at the Renaissance Club in East Lothian yesterday, his third successive sub-70 round, to sit on 11-under and nine shots behind leader Bernd Wiesberger heading into the final day.

But with the benign conditions lending themselves to some redhot scoring, he freely admits that there are probably too many players ahead of him on the leaderboard.

His focus, instead, will be on maintaining the positive momentum he has built this week as he heads home to Northern Ireland for next week’s Open Championship.

‘I will always play better the week after playing in a competitive event,’ he said. ‘I feel that’s how my game gets into good shape.

‘So I’ve achieved what I wanted to. I would have loved to have come here and contended and won, but I’m sure someone is going to get to at least 18, 19 or 20-under par (heading into the final round).

‘So it’s not as if I’ve got a real chance of winning. It’s the number of people you need to pass on the leaderboard.

‘But if I can post a good score on Sunday and leave here shooting 15, 16 or 17-under for the week, I’ll have had a good week.

‘All I wanted to do was get a scorecard in my hand. It didn’t matter if the winning score was 20 under or 10-under, I just wanted to play four rounds of competitive golf.’

With so many players burning it up in a blitz of birdies, McIlroy admitted that the course set-up at Renaissance has been a tad too easy for such a world-class field.

He added: ‘I would have liked to have seen it a little more difficult, but it’s tough.’