Friday 16 March 2018 09:44, UK
Rory McIlroy refused to let a final-hole mistake take the gloss off a more confident performance as he began the Arnold Palmer Invitational with a three-under 69.
McIlroy has been working hard on his game following a disappointing last two outings in Florida, finishing a lowly 59th at the Honda Classic before missing the halfway cut at last week's Valspar Championship.
The 28-year-old was keen to atone in his final stroke play event before his attempts to complete a career Grand Slam of majors at the Masters, and he made a bright start with a birdie at the opening hole.
He did well to save par at the long fourth after finding water off the tee, and he then raced into a share of the lead on five under par when he reeled off four birdies in five holes from the sixth.
McIlroy consolidated his position with a good run of pars, although he was unable to take advantage of the two par-fives on the back nine, but he slipped out of the top 10 when he pulled a three-wood out-of-bounds from the tee at the last and eventually holed a tricky four-foot putt to limit the damage to a double-bogey six.
The Northern Irishman admitted he needed to emulate eight-time Bay Hill champion Tiger Woods and pick up more shots at the long holes, but he was satisfied that his hard work on the practice range was beginning to pay off.
Asked what aspects of his game he had been working on, McIlroy said: "Everything! A little bit on my swing, and I never really like to work on my swing whenever I'm at tournaments because you're trying to just play golf and get the ball where you're looking, instead of worrying about how you're doing it.
"So it was nice to be able to work on my swing for a couple of days, and I messed around a little bit on the putting green and just sort of tried to get a little more instinctive and reactive on the greens. And that's helped a little bit going back to a couple of feels that I've had before.
"But just having a little bit of extra time to work on some stuff, I came into this week feeling much better about my game than I was going into Tampa last week, and you saw some of it out there. It was much better than the golf that I've been able to produce the last couple weeks.
"I do need to play the par-fives better. This is a golf course where you need to play the par-threes well and play the par-fives well and to be only one under on the par-fives today, I need to do that better. Tiger's won it plenty of times around here and that's what he did.
"He can be conservative and play conservative for the most part, but if you make birdies on the par-fives, you're going to be right up there.
"You look at the history of how Tiger has done well at this event and he's killed the par-fives and played really conservatively and within his comfort zone the rest of the way, and that obviously has done him pretty well."
