\n<\/p>\n
“I don’t want to sound like I’m that disappointed but I feel like I left a few out there. I missed a couple of short ones. <\/p>\n
“Overall, it was a really solid start on a golf course that I’m very comfortable on and historically I’ve played very well on.”<\/p>\n
Only English duo Tyrrell Hatton and Marco Penge can prevent McIlroy from winning the season-long competition, formerly known as the European Tour’s Order of Merit, but they sit joint-22nd and joint-46th respectively after the opening round.<\/p>\n
McIlroy’s Ryder Cup team-mate Tommy Fleetwood sits in second, one stroke ahead on seven-under-par.<\/p>\n
The 2025 Tour Championship winner hit five birdies over a six-hole stretch down the back nine, helping him leapfrog McIlroy on the leaderboard. <\/p>\n
“I feel like it was a really good day,” said Fleetwood.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t think it was that easy. There are some really good scores out there. There were some really demanding shots on that back nine and I felt like I got into a really good rhythm.<\/p>\n
“Drove it as good as I’ve drove it all year. It was a really good driving day. I made two or three good par saves, which is key.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“I don’t want to sound like I’m that disappointed but I feel like I left a few out there. I missed a couple of short ones. “Overall, it was a really solid start on a golf course that I’m very comfortable on and historically I’ve played very well on.” Only English duo Tyrrell Hatton and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}