ARNOLD PALMER INVITATIONAL

March 5, 2021

Rory McIlroy

Bay Hill Club and Lodge

Quick Quotes

Q. You said yesterday it was sort of a day of patience, taking a page out of Tiger's book, picking your moments and getting it around with what you called perhaps the best round of the year. How would you describe today's effort?

RORY MCILROY: Yeah, today was a bit more of a battle. But stayed patient. I picked off three of the par-5s, which is good around here. When I put it in trouble I got it out of trouble.

A couple of really loose tee shots, one on the 8th hole, I made bogey from there.

One on 13, I made bogey from there.

So hit a few better shots coming down the stretch, but just going to go and work on a couple things here on the range.

Q. How do you fine tune things between now and tomorrow?

RORY MCILROY: I think it's pretty simple, I just got too much -- the club was sort of rotating a lot through impact. I just need to sort of stabilize it a little more, maybe just hit a few more sort of hold shots and get my body working a little bit better through the shot.

So, as I say, I hit a couple of those coming in and sort of held a 5-iron on 17 and held a nice 8-iron in there on 18 and they felt a little better. So just going to try to sort of groove that feeling in before tomorrow.

Q. How do you use your past success here as something to lean on in the next two days?

RORY MCILROY: Yeah, I think it's not -- I think with the way the course is playing and with the weather coming in, if I -- you get it to double digits under par this weekend, you're going to have a really good chance.

So, as I said, around here, you don't need to do anything special, you just need to be really solid, limit your mistakes. I feel like it was a day out there today that I sort of did that. Some good up-and-downs on the front nine. It could have been the round that I could have shot 74 or 75, I got in with 71 and pretty happy with that.