Rory McIlroy admits he performed better than expected with an opening-round 68 in the WGC-HSBC Champions, but still finds himself five strokes adrift of the lead in Shanghai.
The world No 3 carded six birdies and a double bogey in a steady first round, but still saw two of his Race to Dubai rivals ahead of him on the leaderboard with Branden Grace setting the pace on nine under and Danny Willett a further two strokes back.
McIlroy was taken ill with food poisoning on Tuesday and missed the following day's pre-tournament pro-am, so was left pleasantly surprised to be able to stay in contention.
"[It was] probably a little better than I was expecting out there to be honest," McIlroy said. "I've lost 10 pounds since being here; I can't remember the last time I was this light.
"When I was hitting balls this morning on the range I had not been out of bed for basically 48 hours, so I was really stiff. I needed to loosen up quite a lot, but when I got out there I felt pretty good.
"But hopefully [if I have] a couple of good meals over the next couple days and rehydrate I'll be feeling a lot better. Thankfully it was a decent start, and now I'm going to try to just get into the tournament.
"I'm disappointed I missed three good chances coming in there on the front nine so it was a score I thought could have been a lot better, but considering the position I was in this time yesterday, it's not a bad start."
Danny Willett trails McIlroy by nearly 400,000 in the Race to Dubai standings but with each of the Final Series events offering 1.3m points to the winner, the Englishman is playing in the each of the remaining three events to try and end the season as European No 1 for the first time.
The 28-year-old posted eight birdies during an impressive opening day at Sheshan International, briefly holding a share of the lead until a final-hole blemish at the ninth.
Willett already has two wins to his name this season as well as five other top-10 finishes, with the Englishman delighted to still be challenging for top spot so late in the year.
"I've not dropped out of the top two on the Order of Merit all year," Willett said. "I suppose when you win Nedbank (Golf Challenge), it's a pretty good leapfrog on everyone at the beginning of the season.
"It's been nice to be up there. I think Rory overtook us somewhere in the middle and we've been trying to claw our way back ever since. It's two and a half weeks left to try and claw a little more back.
"We played pretty nicely last week, didn't lose too much ground and again this week, you have to put yourself somewhere near and see what happens.
"I don't think he's playing next week and if you can be within touching distance going into Dubai, Dubai could be pretty interesting."
No comments:
Post a Comment