Rory McIlroy makes steady start at FedEx St Jude Championship in Memphis
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The Northern Ireland player is four shots behind early leader Jordan Spieth, who topped the leaderboard with a seven under par 63.
"It's probably the worst I could have scored," said McIlroy, speaking on Sky Sports.
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Hide Ad"I drove the ball incredibly well and it could have been a lot lower."
American Spieth goes into round two leading Tom Kim by one shot and admitted he has been working on his putting.
“Quite a bit of putting. I played really well at the British. Tee to green, I played well enough to win,” he said afterwards.
“I didn’t feel like I missed many of my lines. I just couldn’t quite get the matching of the line and speed on the greens.
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Hide Ad“Now we come to slopey Bermuda and very fast slopey Bermuda where I feel a little more comfortable picking lines and kind of feeding the ball in using gravity.
“I think that helped, along with quite a bit of work as best I could in Texas right now, which is really from the hours of 7:00 a.m to noon before it’s almost unbearable.
“Just tightened some things up. I tried to play a lot just to shoot scores. I had kind of taken off playing a bunch, and I think that that helped a bit in the last couple weeks.”
England’s Tommy Fleetwood and Aaron Rai were the best of the British contingent, closing out Thursday on four under par.
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Hide AdMeanwhile, Northern Ireland’s Stephanie Meadow was three shots off the lead in the AIG Women's Open at Walton Heath after the first day.
Cavan’s Leona Maguire also made a strong start to the event and is a shot further down on leader Ally Ewing of the USA, who shot a four-under round of 68.