Birdie blitz Rory McIlroy earns early first-round lead over Arnold Palmer Invitational Bryson DeChambeau | Golf News

Seven birdies, including five in a row over the second half of his tour, lift 2018 champion Rory McIlroy to the top of the board early on the opening day at Bay Hill in Orlando

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The best of Rory McIlroy’s six-underground opening round that won him the first lead at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Rory McIlroy enjoyed his favorite piece of golf this year as he claimed the clubhouse direction early on the first day of the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

After initially struggling to get any move into his tour, McIlroy exploded into life with five consecutive birdies on the face of nine and looked sharper in all division as he raced to the top of the board on six under, one ahead of Bryson DeChambeau.

The shape of Bay Hill has been reduced by recent rain, with situations playing in the hands of the power players, and McIlroy took advantage of the length and accuracy off the tee while playing out comfortably Tyrrell Hatton and Francesco Molinari in the last tent group. three heroes.

Hatton made just one birdie in 77 and Molinari was one blow worse after dropping three hits over the final two holes, but McIlroy did not notice the efforts of his playing partners and he chose the nine faces in a relentless style.

After starting on the 10th, McIlroy was unable to make a birdie on one of the para-fives on the back side, but he put in birdie putts from 15 feet at each par-threes before a mis-moon came born into the short 18th and was able to stop on his first bogey of the day.

McIlroy made five birdies just in the second half of his round

It was a familiar story of “two steps forward and one back” for the 2018 winner, but he found the spark he needed to put in for his first win in 15 months, whipping a 55-foot mammoth putt for a bonus birdie at which the second, if he had missed the hole, would have gone at least six feet past the cup.

McIlroy yelled for another sub-par wedge into the third with a yoke from outside 22 feet, with his decision to return to a traditional blade-style putter at The Concession last week started to look reasonable as he put it with more authority and confidence.

The No. 8 world scored the fourth and sixth par-five runs in two to put up a two-put normal birdies each side of another win at fifth, and McIlroy was suddenly looking down on the field with DeChambeau emerging as his closest rival from the early wave of startups.

McIlroy claimed the lead early ahead of Bryson DeChambeau

“Of course 66 is a great way to start the tournament,” said McIlroy, who admitted to getting some encouragement from Tiger Woods’ treatment of Bay Hill in his eight victories at center-back. Orlando.

“I feel like you don’t have to do anything special to burn a good score here. You can be very reserved off the tee if you want to be, so there are a handful of irons that you can I think the hardest thing about this course is the par – threes and I played them in three under today, so that was an advantage.

“But I’ve seen Tiger a lot here over the years and as he played this course, he played it very carefully, he paid attention to the para-fives, and that was usually good to enough to do the job.So I have done I have taken a small piece of a page out of his book.

“The first few holes were a bit slow going and I made a really good birdie on 14 and that kind of got me, I got the round going. The two duos behind nine were great. Coming off the last week where I had a big problem with the par-threes, so it was quite a turn.

“But I played well after that and I hit some really good scenes, some good drivers, I saw a lot of positive signs out there today, and that was encouraging.

“I’ve always felt comfortable here. I think I saw the stat the other day that this course, more than any other course on the PGA Tour, the relationship between strokes received from the tee and performance at this course is higher than anywhere else any other. And obviously Bryson and I are at No. 1 and 2 in strokes received from the tee, and we both fired two good scores today.

“This is one of those places where you can benefit yourself by taking a driver and picking it up there, tee shots like three and six, where some of the shortest boys have to go up the sliver of fairway up the right side when men are longer than worry about that. “