McIlroy posts 66 at Bay Hill to share lead in Arnie’s invitational

ORLANDO, Fla. – There might be no better place than Bay Hill and no better tournament than the Arnold Palmer Invitational for Rory McIlroy to get on a roll.

Following Tiger Woods’ lead helps. McIlroy, the former world No. 1 and four-time major winner, put himself in prime position to snap his winless streak dating to the 2019 World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions with a sparkling 6-under-par 66 Thursday to grab a share of the first-round lead.

McIlroy made five birdies in a row on his front nine, two more on the back and carded just one bogey and put his signature to one of his best rounds of the year.

“I’ve watched Tiger enough here over the years and the way he played this course was, he played it very conservatively, he took care of the par-5s, and that was usually good enough to get the job done,” McIlroy said. “So sort of take a little bit of a leaf out of his book.”

Not a bad read, for Woods won a record eight times here. As for McIlroy, he has four top-6 finishes the past four years, including a victory in 2018.

“I feel like you don’t have to do anything special to shoot a good score here,” he added. “You can be really conservative off the tees if you want to be. There’s a bunch of irons that you can hit off tees. I think the toughest thing about this course is the par-3s, and I played them in 3-under today. So that was a bonus.”

Corey Conners joined McIlroy atop the leaderboard. He started on the 10th and birdied his first three holes and was 6 under for the day through seven holes after an eagle on 16. He took the solo lead with a birdie on No. 6 but three-putted from 60 feet on his last hole to drop back into a share of the lead.

Bryson DeChambeau didn’t try to drive the green by hitting across the massive lake on the par-5 sixth but still birdied the hole and added five more for a 67. Jason Kokrak, Sebastian Munoz and Ben An shot 68.

McIlroy, with 18 PGA Tour titles and 27 wins overall worldwide, has gone 23 starts without one. He was the hottest player before COVID-19 shut down the tour. While he has 10 top-10 finishes in the stretch, he’s fallen to No. 8 in the world, his lowest ranking since 2019.

“The nice thing is it’s feeling better and better basically every time I go out there on the golf course,” he said. “I saw a lot of really positive signs out there today.”

Said Conners of his round: “I did a lot of things really well today and hit a lot of really nice shots and was able to hole some nice putts.”