McIlroy was pleased with a solid start to his Masters tournament but will be keeping an eye on Scottie Scheffler in round two in order to not drift too far from the leaders
McIlroy was pleased with a solid start to his Masters tournament but will be keeping an eye on Scottie Scheffler in round two in order to not drift too far from the leaders
I stuck to my game plan, I didn’t start chasing it. The way conditions were today, you really couldn’t. You had to stay patient and be as disciplined as possible. Anything under par today is a decent score. But, again, I will rue the last four holes – I felt like I could have got a little bit more out of it.”
McIlroy was forced to lay up at the par-five second after finding the pines off the tee and three-putted from off the green for bogey, then undid a close-range birdie at the next by failing to get up and down from the sand at the fourth.
The Northern Irishman took advantage of the par-five eighth and followed a birdie at the iconic par-three 12th by adding another at the par-four 14th, only to miss a great opportunity at the par-three 16th and bogey his penultimate hole to slip six strokes back.
“I held it together well,” McIlroy added. “It was a little scrappy. The conditions are tricky. It’s hard to commit to where the wind direction is at times. I think after the slow start sort of making a few birdies around the turn was good. A little wasteful coming in, but overall still not a bad score and obviously a lot of golf left to play.”
McIlroy was playing alongside Xander Schauffele and world No 1 Scottie Scheffler, who made a strong start to his bid for a second Masters victory in three years with a brilliant bogey-free 66.
Scheffler’s wife Meredith is heavily pregnant with their first child, which is due to arrive later this month, with the 2022 champion reiterating his pre-tournament commitment that he would withdraw from The Masters should she go into labour early.