Sunday 3 July 2016 09:38, UK
Rory McIlroy credited his "resilience" for his spirited back-nine comeback which lifted him back into firm contention in the third round of the 100th Open de France in Paris.
McIlroy had started the day in a five-way share of the lead following his superb second-round 66 on Friday, but he got off to an uncertain start to his third round as he almost found water with his opening tee shot while also duffing a pitch en route to a scrappy, double-bogey six.
The world No 4 dropped another shot at the third after driving into a hazard and, after a birdie at the next, he carded further bogeys at seven and eight to slip to one under par - eight shots behind leader Jeunghun Wang at the turn.
But McIlroy produced a stunning response on the inward half, igniting his charge back up the leaderboard with a birdie at the 11th, and another followed at the 13th before he picked up three in a row from 15 as he backed up some sublime approaches with a hot putter.
McIlroy has been tinkering with his swing in recent weeks in a bid to eliminate "bad habits" which had crept into his game, while he is also determined to reduce the number of swing thoughts in his mind as he stands over the ball.
He insisted on Friday that he was still not entirely comfortable with his "mechanical" swing, but he was delighted with his Saturday fightback which hauled him back to within two shots of 54-hole leader Thongchai Jaidee.
"It was a great finish. Any time you can shoot five under on the back nine here at Le Golf National, it's a really good score," said McIlroy, who is making his first start since missing the cut at the US Open last month.
"It was a shame I had to do that to get myself back into the tournament, but I guess it just shows you the toughness of this golf course at times, and especially combine that with just missing a few fairways and not really getting any momentum; to come back the way I did on the back nine, I think it was just more resilience than anything else.
"I knew over the last couple of days, I've hit enough good shots to know that I can give myself chances for birdies and I can make some birdies, so I knew it was possible. I just needed to find a spark or get something going, and I think the birdie on 11 was big. I missed one on 10, so birdie on 11 and I felt like I played some really good golf after that.
"You saw two ends of the spectrum there. There was the front nine where there was nothing fluid at all about what I was doing, and then the back nine when I started to get some confidence is when the opposite way it went; it went the best way it could.
"I guess it just shows a little bit of the fragile state of my game at the minute. The good's really good and the bad is, you know, it's pretty bad. If I can just concentrate on the good stuff and try and replicate that back nine through the whole 18 tomorrow, I should be okay.
"I wanted to hole that birdie putt on the last to get into the final group, but I'll be in the group ahead and will try to give them something to shoot at."
