Being atop a World Golf Championships leaderboard on Sunday is far different than on a Thursday, but it’s a most positive sign for Piercy – a three-time victor on tour who shot better than 66 only once in his first 24 stroke-play rounds in WGC events.
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You don’t get much glitzier than those two.
Not because at 5-under he sits one off of a lead shared by Scott Piercy and Marcus Fraser.
McIlroy will tee off in the opening round of this week’s WGC-Cadillac Championship at 11:32 a.m. Thursday alongside Jordan Spieth and Jason Day.
Bubba Watson and Jimmy Walker joined Spieth at 3-under – Watson with six birdies and three bpgeys, Walker with five and two.
The other, Jason Day, didn’t do anything all that special in the course of an even-par 72. “It’s a big round. But we’ll come back [Friday] and get off to a good start”. On 10, if I cut it, because I like to cut the ball, if I over-cut it, it’s in the water.
Mickelson’s 67 featured bogeys at 14 and 18.
McIlroy needed just 23 putts and was beaming after his round. Then he was derailed by elbow surgery two years ago. Of the 66 players in this elite field, 47 of the top 50 in the world rankings are playing. He’s finished in the top 10 in only one of his three tournaments so far in 2016. Asked afterward if he saw this kind of round coming, Piercy conceded: “Not this”. He hit balls for eight hours on Monday, he said, in search of something. “Basically, it was just getting deeper into my backswing”.
I’ll be back tomorrow with a look at the state of play at halfway but if I doing anything in-running tonight I’ll post it to Twitter.
No matter how well things are going around this place, the Blue Monster, where water comes into play on 10 holes and the gnarly rough drives the players nuts on every hole, will rear its ugly head at some time.
“I wish I could hit it in the center of the golf club all the time, but sometimes I’m like an amateur and I hit it in the parts where we’re not supposed to”, he said. “Hopefully, I can do this the rest of the week”.
Scott arrived in Miami on the back of a runner-up finish at Riviera followed by an outstanding victory in last week’s Honda Classic – his first PGA Tour title since being forced to revert to a traditional-length putter following the ban on anchored putting. “We’re trying to beat those guys week-in and week-out”. We don’t know how long he has been working at in practice and I’m sure it’s not something he would have done if he wasn’t comfortable with it. I don’t think I had eight birdies the whole tournament.
After missing the cut in the Honda Classic last week, McIlroy changed to a “crosshanded” putting method – with his left hand below the right on the grip – and vowed to stick with it regardless of the short-term outcome, with his bid to complete the career Grand Slam at the Masters just five weeks away. “I’ve just got to try to get in my own little world out there”. His best round on the Blue Monster in 2014 was 69; his low score past year was 71. “It should have played as easy as it possibly can with just a five-to-ten mile-an-hour breeze”.
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“If it doesn’t work right from the get-go [Thursday], you’re not going to see me on Friday morning putting conventional again”.
