Takeaways from Round 1 of PGA Championship

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Rory McIlroy was within sight of a first title in 17 months after the third round of the Dubai Desert Classic where he lay only one shot behind surprise leader Li Haotong on Saturday. McIlroy, who finished his second round in the morning, surprisingly struggled for the first time in seven rounds into his comeback from a three-month layoff, and was 1-over par at the turn in the third round. The four-time major champion then recovered with five birdies on the back nine for a 4-under 68 and 19 under overall that put him one behind Li. Li, in the leader group with McIlroy, shot a bogey-free 64 at Emirates Golf Club. Li, the highest ranked Chinese male player in the world at No. 60, produced a brilliant display of iron play and putting to be in great position to add to his only previous European Tour win, the 2016 China Open. He needed just 24 putts to complete his round, and said: “It’s going to be fun out there tomorrow.” McIlroy’s last win was in August 2016 at the Tour Championship, and he was impressed by Li. “He holed everything he sort of needed to,” McIlroy said. “I know that if he continues to play like that, he will be tough to beat, but I feel like if I play my game, I’ve got a good chance. “I showed that even when I didn’t have my best stuff, I was able to battle around and get in with a decent score. So hopefully, I have a bit of a better game tomorrow.” On another low-scoring day, Alex Levy of France made a hole-in-one in a round of 65, a score which was matched by playing partner Haydn Porteous of South Africa. The duo was tied for third, three behind the leader at 17 under par. Levy was making a stunning run and reached the top of the leaderboard briefly before falling back with consecutive bogeys on 15 and 16. That run included a hole in one on the par-3 fourth hole with a 9-iron shot from 171 yards. Porteous joined him with three birdies in his last three holes. The low round of the day was a 9-under 63 by Andy Sullivan of England, who moved to fifth on the leaderboard at 16 under.

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There’s a line of demarcation in Rory McIlroy’s 2019-20 season, and it’s the PGA TOUR’s three-month layoff in which the entire sports world paused for the coronavirus pandemic. Before the TOUR shut things down after the first round of THE PLAYERS Championship in March, McIlroy – the defending FedExCup champion and Player of the Year – had six straight top-five finishes, including a win at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions. Since then? Five starts and just one top-30 finish, a T11 at the Travelers Championship. “Before the world sort of shut down, I was playing some really good golf, consistent,” McIlroy said from San Francisco’s chilly TPC Harding Park, where he is gearing up for this week’s PGA Championship. “And then yeah, having that three-month break, coming back, everything sort of changed. Everything feels different, in the competitive arena, anyway.” Not that McIlroy has faded into obscurity. Hardly. He’s fifth in the FedExCup, and had retained the No. 1 world ranking until losing it to Jon Rahm last month. (Rahm has since lost it to Justin Thomas.) No, the results for McIlroy have just been – flat. “My game doesn’t feel that far away,” he said. “I feel like I’ve played pretty well. I just haven’t got a lot out of my game. Haven’t scored as well as I was doing before the lockdown. … Haven’t been efficient as I was back then. Short game hasn’t quite been as sharp.” The question is why, and can he get it back. Coastal-adjacent TPC Harding Park, where he won the 2015 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, beating Gary Woodland in the final, is one of his happy places on the schedule, so a return to form there this week would not be entirely unexpected. Maybe there’s still some McIlroy mojo hovering up there in the marine layer. Granted, the layout and routing are different, and the course is playing longer, and with narrower fairways. The damp conditions are more or less the same. The sweater weather remains. Also, as McIlroy noted, the PGA setup man is still Kerry Haigh, whom he likes. (The PGA is the lone major McIlroy has won twice, at Kiawah in 2012 and Valhalla in 2014.) As for his relatively lackluster results, the chattering class has speculated about the why, and McIlroy hasn’t denied it. Having noted a certain week-to-week sameness in golf’s (and other pro sports’) quiet new normal, he suggested he has struggled to play without galleries. “He draws a lot of his energy from the fact that fans of all nationalities pull for him,” said Golf Channel analyst and former world No. 1 David Duval. “He’s a world-favorite player. Being out here where there are so (few) people around can take some adjustment.” McIlroy wouldn’t deny that, but knows things aren’t likely to change overnight as the virus shows no signs of going away. And he knows he’s going to have to find his A-game on his own. “I’ve said in the last few weeks that I’ve struggled to adapt to it,” he said, “but it is what it is. You need to go out there and do the best that you can. We all wish that we were playing in front of fans and have it feel like a real major championship, but I think we’re just lucky that we’re able to play golf tournaments at this point and grateful to PGA of America and all the governing bodies for adapting and pivoting and being able to put on these championships.” And again: He’s not far off. “I shot a 63 at Colonial,” he said. “I shot a 65 to make the cut at Hilton Head; a 63 at Travelers, a couple of good scores last week in Memphis. So the good stuff is in there. I was just saying earlier, it’s just the sharpness and being efficient with my scoring. “Turning the 73s that I’ve shot into 70s,” he added. “That’s the sort of stuff that I think when you’re sharp and you’re playing a bit and you’re sort of in your groove you’re able to do that a little better, and that’s the stuff that I haven’t been able to do since coming back out here.”

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AUGUSTA, Ga. - It might as well have been a sick patient. Such was the pre-tournament hand wringing and concern shown the frail, largely defenseless 510-yard, par-5 13th hole, aka Azalea, coming into this Masters. Although the club is reportedly considering adding a new back tee, the hole looked overmatched against the prodigious driving distances of the modern golfer, chiefly Bryson DeChambeau. "I had pitching wedge in," he said after an early practice round this week. "I cut the corner drastically." RELATED: Leaderboard | Pro long drivers discuss DeChambeau’s length Well, the golf gods must have been listening. And they didn't like it. DeChambeau hacked his way to a shocking double-bogey 7 on 13, a misadventure that included a sliced drive; a hook into the bushes left of the green; a provisional ball; a search and found ball/unplayable lie; a one-shot penalty/drop; a chunked flop shot; and two putts. Having begun his Masters on the back nine, red-hot U.S. Open champion DeChambeau - the most talked about player in golf and some pundits' favorite to win the green jacket - was suddenly 2 over par through his first four holes. He rallied from there to salvage a 2-under 70. "I’m very happy with the patience I delivered to the course today," he said. That patience was tested early as he missed a short birdie putt at the 10th hole, his first of the day, and badly pulled his tee shot into the trees left of the 11th fairway. He hacked out and salvaged par. His birdie putt at the par-3 12th lipped out. Then came his crazy 13th. "I just didn’t draw it around the corner enough, and I got greedy," DeChambeau said. "This golf course, as much as I’m trying to attack it, it can bite back. It’s still Augusta National, and it’s the Masters. It’s an amazing test of golf no matter what way you play it." DeChambeau birdied five of his last 13 holes, including the eighth and ninth to end his day. "I tried to take on some risk today," he said. "It didn’t work out as well as I thought it would have, but at the end of the day I’m proud of myself the way I handled myself and finished off. Birdieing 8 and 9 was a testament to my focus level and wanting to contend here."

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