The game looked easy for Rory McIlroy on Thursday at Jumeirah Estates’ Earth Course, as the world number two cruised around in 66 blows and admitted to feeling a little disappointed that he hadn’t picked off another couple of birdies on the way home.
Friday, however, was a different story. McIlroy’s long game was uncharacteristically out of sorts in the early stages in particular, as he gave himself just four birdie putts on the opening nine and one of those came from the fringe – technically a missed green – on the fifth.
By birdieing both par-5s and the ninth on the front side, scrambling for pars on three, four and six, but falling victim to really poor lies when he missed the fairway on one and eight, he made the turn at one-under when he could easily have found himself hurtling down the leaderboard.
He found his rhythm a little more on the back nine, birdieing 10, 14 and 15, but the misses off the tee were still proving costly and he dropped a shot from the severely penal fairway bunker on 12, and another left-miss on 18 drew a lie so bad that even a player of McIlroy’s strength and power couldn’t advance it more than 32 yards.
Once his biggest weakness, his putter came to the rescue after an excellent recovery pitch and he rolled the seven-footer into the heart of the cup to end the day tied for second after a 69, level with Shane Lowry among others, and three behind Nicolai Højgaard who, along with Daniel Hillier who shot 68, were the only players from the final four groups to shoot lower than McIlroy’s second-round tally.
“Yeah, I had to battle a little more today than I did yesterday,” McIlroy said after signing his card. “I think the conditions were slightly tougher as well, so, you know, if you looked at the scoring yesterday compared to today, it is a little bit tougher.
“And yeah, I missed a couple of more fairways today, and when I did miss the fairways, I got some really bad lies, like the worst lies I’ve seen this week.
“I didn’t even get it back onto the fairway at the last and had to scramble there, but, I felt like I showed my scoring skills today and battled well and stayed patient and got the ball up and down when I needed to.
“Overall, you know, to shoot 69, I’m pretty pleased considering some of the spots that I found myself.”
You could make the case that the McIlroy of years gone by would’ve conspired to shoot a round of two- or three-over when his game clearly wasn’t firing on all cylinders as it was on Friday, and his ability to recover from mistakes and repair the damage rapidly is one of the things he’s most pleased with.
“The one thing I did very well today, when I made a bogey, I bounced back straight away with a birdie, which was nice. And I think knowing what the scoring holes are here, so, you know, going into the back nine, knowing I’ve got the two par-5s and I’ve got 15, the short par-4.
“There’s some difficult holes as well, like 12 and 13, and 16 and 17, knowing that if you just get through those holes with pars, you know, not trying to be a hero and then just trying to take advantage of the easier holes – that’s sort of how I tried to piece it together today and it ended up working well for me and I shot a decent score.”
The 69 also tightened his grip on the Race to Dubai title, as he increased his leaderboard advantage over Marco Penge by one after the Englishman shot a two-under 70 to move to level-par overall and trail McIlroy by nine.
Tyrrell Hatton now appears to be the main danger man. McIlroy’s Ryder Cup teammate shot a 67 to move to -7 overall and into a share of 11th, but for him to overtake McIlroy in the Race to Dubai standings, he’d need to win the tournament and hope that the Holywood man finishes no better than in a three-way tie for eighth, which is a longshot but not entirely out of the question.
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