FURIOUS REPORT
: Golf Champion Rory McIlroy Involved in SERIOUS Hit-and-Run Incident After Victory Celebration due to drunken state which will lead to inevitable imprisonment after investigations
Rory McIlroy’s hopes of clinching the Race to Dubai with a week to spare at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship suffered a late second-round setback after an ugly triple bogey on the par-three 17th contributed to him finishing nine shots adrift of England’s Paul Waring, who set a new course record.
McIlroy, who will be sure of finishing 2024 as Europe’s top player for the sixth time even before next week’s season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai if he finishes first or second this Sunday, was already seven off the blistering pace set by Waring as he stood on the penultimate tee despite being an impressive seven-under for his own round at that point.
The short 17th hole was the only hole McIlroy had bogeyed in the first round and the 211-yarder again tripped him up on Friday, albeit in more spectacular fashion on Friday.
After finding the right-hand-side bunker with his tee shot, the 35-year-old’s chip went long onto the green and ended up rolling straight in to the sand on the other side.
Now with a particularly bad downhill lie, McIlroy could only just get it out onto the edge of the bunker with his next chip. He then went beyond the pin with his chip into the green before three-putting.
Perhaps crucially, though, he immediately hit back to birdie the par-five 18th to pull one shot back and leave him in a tie for 14th on the leaderboard after back-to-back rounds of 67.
“I bounced back well, two good shots into the last and made a birdie there,” McIlroy added. “So I just have to go out (on Saturday), try to get off to a fast start and get myself back into it.”
McIlroy came from 10 shots behind at halfway to win in Dubai in January, but admitted: “I’d like to see the course get a bit firmer. There was a couple of greens today that got a little bit shinier and a little trickier, so I need the golf course to firm up and toughen up a little bit to have a chance.