ATLANTA – Rory McIlroy had Irish luck at 18 at Eastlake Golf Club in the first round of the Tour Championship.
After finding a green bunker in the PAR-5, Northern Ireland native McIlroy blew a bunker shot from 39 yards into the bleachers behind the green, earning the most generous bounce. His ball ended in green and stopped 17 feet below the hole, and he rolled into the putt, with the most unlikely birdie closing out the 4-under 66 round.
What was McIlroy thinking when the ball swayed over the greenery?
“Ah, no, almost,” he said. “It’s been a little thinner and obviously came out a little faster than I wanted, but at that point I’m hoping something will happen. All Tio enthusiasts will love it on Twitter tonight.”
Certainly, it may have been the most awful example of a temporary, immovable object that benefits players, but it also came at the most convenient time as rule officials were on the crisis of blowing the horn to blow it because of bad weather that was about to crash into the area.
“In the end, I’m pretty lucky,” McIlroy said. “If it hadn’t come down, if we had to fall, we might not be finished, in many different ways, for a lucky score, for a lucky score.”
Scotty Scheffler, who shot 63 and Russell Henry (61) with two strokes, was amazed at McIlroy’s fortune.
“I never really got so ingrained in someone else’s ball coming back outside of my partner at a team event,” he said. “We’re walking to 18 and said the bones blow in the moment, so we watched his ball fly towards the grandstand. ‘Oh, well, there’s no way to finish this,’ so it was reassuring when we saw him come back to the greenery. ”
As mentioned in saying, it’s better to be lucky than to be lucky.
