'Little pedestrian' Rory McIlroy opens Houston with level-par round
Rory McIlroy entered the Texas Children’s Houston Open with talk of filling up his “confidence bucket” – but a rain bucket proved more apt following a start disruped by wind and water.
A level-par round of 70 to kick off proceedings on Thursday featured two birdies and two bogeys towards his search for a third PGA Tour triumph this season.
Entering Friday’s second round (6.03pm tee-off, UK time) trailing a four-strong pack of Alejandro Tosti, Taylor Pendrith, Keith Mitchell and Ryan Gerard - left in front at the head of the leaderboard on five under before play was suspended due to darkness - McIlroy accepted his initial run proved “a little pedestrian”.
The world’s number two made the trip to Memorial Park bolstered by tour wins in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Players Championship all towards the start of the major season with next month’s Masters.
“I’m obviously playing well, I want to keep playing well,” said McIlroy in his pre-tournament press conference. “So I think every round you play where you see good things you’re sort of filling up that confidence bucket a little bit, so I want to see that.”
With that goal in mind, his first outing in the Houston Open must have been a source of weather-related frustration.
“Sort of a tale of two halves,” McIlroy said on the official PGA Tour website. “Felt like I was scrambling for the most part on the first nine and then, yeah, I feel like I left a couple out there on the last nine.”
He added: “Couldn't really find the middle of the club face for the first few holes...once it brightened up and as the conditions got a little better, I felt like I drove it pretty well.”
McIlroy will enter the weekend aiming to move closer to achieving his ambition stated earlier this week of “get a card in my hand and shoot scores and hopefully get myself in contention and try to win another golf tournament”. On his target for Texas beyond a win, McIlroy added: “It was great to get a win a couple weeks ago (Players Championship) but I still feel I could have played a lot better...it’s a good opportunity to go out and see if some of the work I did at home and I’m continuing to do here, hopefully it’s all going in the right direction.”