Rory McIlroy backtracked on his previous complaints about the conditions at Aronimink after he recorded an impressive six birdies en route to a four-under-par 66 to put himself back in contention for the US PGA Championship. The Northern Irish star now believes he’s well in contention for a seventh major crowd, but has plans to watch one film in particular to ‘forget about things’ on the course.
The 37-year-old is just one stroke off the pace as he completed his scorecard. That came on the heels of Friday’s 67 as he bounced back from a four-over-par opening round which had hampered his prospects of claiming consecutive majors.
McIlroy was amongst the morning wave at Aronimink Golf Club, setting off more than three and a half hours ahead of the leaders. He momentarily drew level with the four-under mark held by overnight leaders Maverick McNealy and Alex Smalley, but a dropped shot at the 17th knocked him back.
Speaking after the third round, McIlroy made somewhat of a U-turn on his previous complaints and said: “Look when you have a set of greens like this you can start to frustrate people a little easier I think. You heard it in me last night, you heard it in Scottie [Scheffler].
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“I saw some of his comments. I think there was a lot of guys that were frustrated yesterday coming off the course, but again, it’s frustrating to us, but at the same time it creates a hell of an entertaining championship. If I wasn’t playing this tournament I’d love what’s going on this week, but watching and playing are two different things.”
McIlroy plans to catch some of Saturday’s play but has other entertainment lined up to keep him occupied. “I’ll watch a little bit of it,” he said.
“I’ll go back to the house and put the feet up. I started Batman: The Dark Knight last night, so I’ll try and finish that. That’s one of my go-tos to try to forget about things.
“I’ll be curious just to see how the leaders go this afternoon. The wind was whipping at the end.
“We’ll see if it continues to blow as hard as that. I’d certainly like it to blow as hard as that as the afternoon goes on, but we’ll see.”
View 2 ImagesRory McIlroy produced a much-improved second round at the PGA Championship(Image: Getty Images)
McIlroy remained uncertain as to where the lead might stand by day’s end, with the likes of Justin Thomas and Jon Rahm racking up birdies on the leaderboard behind him as he addressed the press.
“I feel like I still did enough to think I have a chance going into tomorrow,” he said. “If I had played the last three holes at one under instead of one over, I would have got to five under.
“I sort of thought if I could go out today and get to that, it would make the leaders shoot under par to either be with me or ahead of me. So I didn’t get there. I made a couple of mistakes the last three holes.”
The challenging scoring conditions from the opening two days relented on Saturday as the early starters, including Justin Rose and Michael Kim, started to compile a succession of birdies. McIlroy knew he had to make his move and delivered precisely that, thrusting himself firmly into contention on a remarkably packed leaderboard.
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