|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
OMEGA DUBAI DESERT CLASSICFebruary 9, 2012Rory McIlroyDUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES MICHAEL GIBBONS: Rory, thanks for coming in, as always. RORY McILROY: No problem. Q. Slow start, quite a good finish, I suppose. RORY McILROY: Yeah. I didn't really get much going on the front nine. Actually hit the best shot of the nine holes on the 7th, four feet and made bogey from that, three‑putted, and then it was nice to make birdie on 9 to turn a level par. And then I sort of got a few things going after that, hit two great shots into 10, made birdie there. I holed a nice putt on 11, great up‑and‑down from about 65 yards on 12 for par and then made another three in a row, 13, 14, 15, and finished it off with a nice 4 on the last. Would have been nice to hole that putt for 3, but I can't complain, you know, opening with a 66, especially after the first nine holes. MICHAEL GIBBONS: Perfect. Take some questions, if we have any. Q. Did you have in mind the fact that Cabrera‑Bello had shot such a good round early, that even if you were to go minus 6, 7‑under, that that was still going to be two or three shots better? RORY McILROY: Yeah. It's the first day, so you shouldn't really be thinking about what score is being posted on the leaderboard, but of course, you see 9‑under on the board early, and you're sort of thinking, you know, you have to get off to a fast start, not to far too far behind early, but you just have to stay patient and know that if you hit some good shots, your opportunities will come, and you just have to try and make a few of them. But 6‑under is a great start, and there's three shots in 54 holes isn't much, so it's nice to ‑‑ even if I had have shot two or three under today, that still would have been a decent start, but 6‑under is nice. Q. Rory, do you know what caused you to have the slow start? RORY McILROY: No. I mean I started with six pars. I mean it wasn't anything ‑‑ it wasn't that bad. Hit two nice shots into the first. I actually started to get JP to read the putts with me on the Back 9, which helped. I'm finding these greens very difficult to read this year, just because there's so much more green on them than there usually is. So started to get JP to read them with me, and that definitely helped. Q. Did you start from the start or halfway through the round? RORY McILROY: No. Halfway through the round. Q. So when the birdies started, is that when that happened? RORY McILROY: Yeah. Yeah. Q. So the Dubai Desert Classic starts on the Back 9 of Thursday? RORY McILROY: Not quite. Not quite. MICHAEL GIBBONS: It started at 7:10 this morning, Paul. RORY McILROY: What he said. Q. Do you feel different on the front than back? RORY McILROY: Yeah, the Back 9 is a much more scorable nine. You have the three par‑5s, and you've got ‑‑ you know, there's a couple of short par 4s. On the front nine, you know, you have that pretty tough stretch, 4, 5, 6, 7, that's a pretty tough stretch. The course doesn't really give you anything there. You've got the second and third hole which you might be thinking are birdie holes, but apart from that you're looking at the Back 9 and you're thinking, well, 10's a reachable par 5. 11's only a short to mid iron. 12's a tough hole, but then you got 13, 14 are birdie holes, and 17 and 18. So there's definitely more opportunities on the Back 9 to pick up a few shots. Q. Maybe you could talk a little bit about your good Back 9. You had 13 where you almost hit a hole‑in‑one, and what are some other shots you were happy with on the back? RORY McILROY: I think it started ‑‑ it probably started on the ninth hole. I had two great shots into 9, and I made my first ‑‑ I made a good putt for par on 5, but apart from that I hadn't really held anything, so made a good putt on 9 for birdie, and that sort of started the ball rolling. Hit two great shots into 10, two‑putted for birdie there. I holed a great putt on 11 for birdie. Getting up‑and‑down from about 65 yards on 12 for par was pretty big. You know, they're really important to keep the momentum going, you know, of the round. And 13, I hit ‑‑ actually felt like I hit a decent second shot. I thought it was going to hang on to the right side of the green, but fell in the bunker, and it was a pretty difficult bunker shot, but got that up‑and‑down. But yeah, once I made a couple of birdies, you feel a bit more comfortable, you get a bit of momentum and you get into a bit of a flow, and that's what happened. Q. Can you remember last time that you called in JP to help you read the greens? RORY McILROY: Yeah. I mean I always when the greens are grainy, I always try and ‑‑ because he would ‑‑ I don't know. I mean sometimes you see a lot more of a putt from a side view rather than looking at it from behind or from ‑‑ you know, so it's just good to get a second opinion, especially on greens like this where sometimes the green isn't that obvious just from behind the ball. You have to look from the sides and stuff. Q. Do you remember the last time? RORY McILROY: No, not really. I mean pretty much on grainy greens, so I mean maybe Hong Kong, or yeah, greens at Dubai World Championship weren't that grainy, but yeah, I get him to read quite a few in Asia and Florida and stuff when the greens have a little bit of grain in them. MICHAEL GIBBONS: Any more? No. Rory, we're all done. Thanks for joining us. RORY McILROY: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|