Rory McIlroy happy with new equipment as he opens with victory at WGC Matchplay via IrishTimesSport
However, McIlroy hit his tee-shot on the Par 3 11th to three feet to regain the two hole advantage and then closed the deal on the 17th where he again hit a lovely punched three-quarter 9-iron tee-shot to seven feet and then had the luxury of not being required to putt.
“After the disappointment of the week at The Players for myself to come back out and play like this first day back out with a couple of new pieces of equipment, it feels good. The driver was really good. I’m much happier with where I am there. Obviously off the tee is such an important part of the game for me ... I knew I just needed to change it up a bit going back to a driver length that I’m a little more comfortable with.
“And the putter was good. I struggled a little bit with the speed, so I’ll work on that a little bit, but overall pretty happy with my win.” Of the change in driver and its dimensions, McIlroy explained: “I used 44 inches in the driver most of last year. I went back to 44½ at the start of this year with the new driver because, it’s funny, I don’t like a lot of loft on the driver, and it just wasn’t spinning enough for me, so I needed to go to a new shaft. If I wasn’t going to get the spin from the loft, I needed to get it from somewhere else. So I went to a slightly softer shaft, and it’s actually really helped.
The biggest surprise of the first day’s play was delivered by a resurgent Fowler who was two down to Rahm after three holes and also through seven but then fought back to eventually claim a 2 and 1 win over the Spaniard. Fowler needs to at least make the quarter-finals to earn enough world ranking points to get back into the world’s top-50 and earn an invite to the Masters.
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