Aussie enjoys round at home

Dallas-area resident Bowditch opens with 8-under 62.

Steven Bowditch matched his career best with an 8-under 62 on Thursday in the AT&T Byron Nelson in Irving, leaving Jordan Spieth seven strokes back in the Masters champion’s hometown event.

Bowditch, an Australian also playing close to his home in the Dallas suburbs, made three putts of at least 24 feet while shooting 30 on the front nine. He had a twostroke lead over another Texan, Jimmy Walker.

A large gallery cheering him all day, Spieth opened with a birdie but missed two short chances late and settled for a 69.

Defending champion Brendon Todd, playing a group ahead of Spieth, had just one birdie and shot 72.

Danny Lee aced the par-3 17th with a 5-iron from 190 yards and finished at 67.

European Tour: Rory McIlroy can’t seem to perform in front of a home crowd.

The Northern Ireland star looked bewildered as he shot a 9-over-par 80 — his worst score of the season — in Thursday’s opening round of the Irish Open. He fell to the bottom of the morning’s leaderboard and finished tied for 150th place at the end of the day.

Irish veteran Padraig Harrington and unheralded Maximilian Kieffer of Germany shot 67 to share the lead.

McIlroy bogeyed half of the course and couldn’t make a birdie. The sellout crowd of nearly 20,000 gasped with each miss, and offered relieved applause as he narrowly two-putted his final hole for par.

“My poor iron play led to missed greens, which led to giving myself a lot of 8- to 12-footers for pars, and that led to missing all of them,” said McIlroy, who described his play as “worse as I got closer to the green.”

He had played three practice rounds at the course south of Belfast after failing to make the cut at Wentworth last weekend, but the unexpected extra practice didn’t help his play.

If McIlroy fails to make the cut Friday, it would be his third straight early exit at the Irish Open. He’s never come close to winning the event in eight tries.