Browsing: McIlroy

Human highlights reel Min Woo Lee has lit up Royal Melbourne to move within a shot of the lead as his superstar playing partner Rory McIlroy briefly threatened to miss the halfway cut on a dramatic day two of the Australian Open.

The stand-out moment of Lee’s second round came when he holed out with a long-range approach shot for eagle on the par-4 10th, raising both arms in triumph.

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Four holes later, McIlroy endured his lowest point when he had a rare air swing after his tee shot finished up under a ti-tree.

The Northern Irishman escaped with a one-putt bogey on the second easiest hole on the course and briefly slipped below the cut line.

“Honestly I can’t remember the last time I had a fresh-air shot,” McIlroy said.

“Not one of my finest moments.”

But McIlroy showed his class to birdie three of the last four holes, signing for a three-under 68 to make the cut by three shots at two under.

Lee had four birdies to go with his hole-out eagle in a flawless six-under 65, which had him in outright third spot at eight under, a single shot behind Denmark’s Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen (66) and Portugal’s Daniel Rodrigues, who carded the day’s low round of 64.

Most of Australia’s big guns are in the thick of the action going into the weekend action, headed by Lee.

Former Masters champion Adam Scott (66) rolled in a clutch par putt on the 18th to join countryman Cameron Smith (65) and Mexico’s Carlos Ortiz in a tie for fourth at seven under.

Min Woo Lee plays his second shot on the sixth hole on day two. Photo by Josh Chadwick/Getty Images

After a string of missed cuts in 2025 — including at all four majors — Smith enjoyed one of his best days of a difficult year.

The 2022 British Open champion roared into contention for a first Australian Open title, capping off a great day with a curling birdie putt on the 18th.

Rising Danish star Neergaard-Petersen locked into the sandbelt mindset as he took a share of the lead.

Fresh off a successful first full year on the DP World Tour, Neergaard-Petersen picked up four shots in three holes early in his second round on Friday and added two further birdies coming home to sign for a 66.

“It makes a difference, certainly knowing what to expect,” said the Dane, who has played several recent rounds at nearby Peninsula-Kingswood with his close friend and DP World Tour colleague David Micheluzzi.

“The eagle I made today, it’s one of those shots you’re never normally thinking about.

“I had a six iron and you’re landing it five steps short of the green. But that’s some of the shots you’ve got to hit here.

“It’s kind of getting into that sandbelt mindset, which I think definitely helped.”

Few pro golfers have fallen further over the past two years than LIV Golf pro Cameron Smith. But the 2022 Open Champion, who is winless in his last two years, has suddenly rediscovered the magic in his home country.

On Friday at the 2025 Crown Australian Open, Smith did something he hasn’t done all season: he made the cut. But he did far more than that. With 36 holes to go, Smith is eyeing an end to his winless drought.

Cam Smith charges into contention at Australian Open

The 2025 season has been one to forget for Smith. Just two years ago, fresh off wins at the Players and Open Championships, he had one of the brightest futures in golf.

After leaving the PGA Tour for LIV, he quickly captured three LIV wins in 2022 and 2023. But since then, Smith has fallen off the map.

‘In my head:’ LIV star Cam Smith baffled by poor form after another missed cut

By:

Josh Schrock

Smith’s best finish on LIV in 2025 was a T5. In seven tournaments outside of LIV, including all four major championships, he failed to make a single cut. As recently as last week, after missing the cut at the Australian PGA Championship, Smith said his problems were “in my head.”

As a result, he’s fallen from 2nd in the Official World Golf Ranking in late 2022 all the way down to his current position of 354th.

But his home open, played at iconic Royal Melbourne, has inspired a comeback.

In Thursday’s opening round, Smith made four birdies, but he added three bogeys to finish at one under and start the second round at risk of missing yet another cut.

But on Friday, Smith put any worries about extending his missed-cut streak to rest. He made six birdies for a bogey-free 65 in Round 2.

Not only did that put him seven shots clear of the cut line, it got him within two shots of the lead held by Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen and Daniel Rodrigues. While Smith has won the Australian PGA Championship three times, most recently in 2022, he’s never won the Australian Open.

Fellow Australian major champion Adam Scott is tied with Smith at seven under.

McIlroy makes cut at Australian Open after late charge

Despite Smith being a homegrown Australian star, he’s not the biggest draw in the field. That would be World No. 2 Rory McIlroy.

‘That’s my opinion’: Rory McIlroy drops hot take about iconic host course

By:

Kevin Cunningham

McIlroy committed to playing this week’s Australian Open months ago as part of his plan to play more historic opens around the world.

Despite slighting the host course Royal Melbourne earlier in the week, McIlroy’s presence has elevated the event to new heights.

But with four holes to play in Friday’s second round, McIlroy found himself on the wrong side of the cut line and staring down an early flight home.

A bogey at the par-5 14th dropped him to even for the round and one over for the tournament. To play the weekend, McIlroy needed at least one birdie coming in.

He didn’t make one, he made three. The 2025 Masters champion made birdies at 15, 17 and 18 to shoot a 68. That left him at two under for the tournament, and two clear of the cut line.

Royal Melbourne’s historic West Course is ranked 7th on GOLF’s Top 100 Courses in the World list. Royal Melbourne is also the host of this week’s 2025 Crown Australian Open, and Rory McIlroy is in the field.

But the five-time major champion worried he may have offended the historic club’s “membership” with one surprising but honest take he shared publicly in his press conference. He thinks Royal Melbourne is not the best golf course in the area, let alone all of Australia.

Here’s what you need to know.

Where Royal Melbourne ranks among Top 100 golf courses

Before we get into McIlroy’s comments, delivered in his pre-tournament press conference at the Aussie Open, it’s important to get a few things clear.

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Royal Melbourne has two courses on the Top 100 Courses in the World list, but technically neither of them is being played this week.

The tournament course at Royal Melbourne is a composite layout comprising of holes from the 7th-ranked West Course, designed by Alister MacKenzie in 1931, and the East Course.

While the West Course is regularly in the conversation for best course in the world, the East Course is no slouch. Designed by Alex Russell, it comes in 82nd on the World Top 100 list.

So while McIlroy is getting his first look at Royal Melbourne this week, the layout he is playing is a mix between the 7th-ranked and 82nd-ranked courses in the world.

Rory McIlroy: Royal Melbourne is not best course is Melbourne

Given Royal Melbourne’s prestige, it came as a surprise when McIlroy took it down a notch in public comments this week.

During his pre-tournament press conference at the club, McIlroy shared his opinion that this week’s host isn’t the best golf course in Australia.

“I don’t want the membership to take this badly,” McIlroy began tentatively, “it’s [Royal Melbourne] probably not the best course in Melbourne.”

He quickly reassured everyone that he still believes Royal Melbourne is one of the best courses in the world.

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Sean Zak

“That’s my opinion, but it’s certainly in the top 10 in the world,” McIlroy. “There’s so much great golf in this country, especially in this area.”

Despite the initial shock, it’s hard to blame the five-time major champion when you hear the course he thinks tops Royal Melbourne.

“Kingston Heath,” McIlroy declared.

Kingston Heath is no goat track. Just a short drive from Royal Melbourne, it has a historic pedigree of its own. Opened in 1928, Kingston Heath was also designed in part by MacKenzie. And its own ranking in the Top 100 Courses in the World, 24th, shows that course experts hold it in high regard.

McIlroy also provided a few more specifics on his first experience at Royal Melbourne.

“I didn’t anticipate how many blind tee shots there was going to be,” he said. “It sort of takes a little bit to figure out. It’s certainly not straightforward.

He did provide the caveat that the unusual southerly wind caused some holes to play “a little funky” in his practice round.

“It’s probably not a fair reflection on the golf course playing in this wind,” McIlroy said. “It would be good to play it in a few other directions.”

He continued: “But it’s obviously an amazing golf course and can’t wait to get out there and compete on it.”

In his first competitive round at the Royal Melbourne composite course Thursday, McIlroy traded five birdies for six bogeys to shoot a one-over 72. He’ll start the second round seven shots off the lead.

Even if he doesn’t turn his play around on the course this week, he should be happier with next year’s Australian Open host course: Kingston Heath.

Organisers didn’t have to wait long to feel the full impact of Rory McIlroy’s appearance at the Australian Open on Thursday. Two thousand fans were waiting outside at Royal Melbourne at 6.30am, eager to get to the 10th tee for the Northern Irishman’s first swing at Australia’s premier tournament in a decade.

Agitation was building. Time was ticking. Scanning all those barcodes might take half an hour or more. And so on a warm and windy workday in Australia’s biggest city, the gates were flung open. Rory mania had begun.

Following the headline group of McIlroy, Adam Scott and Min Woo Lee was a crowd that was four deep around the greens. A mother and daughter, speaking Korean, snuck in front of the mass of men in polos to see the Masters champion record his second bogey – cue the gasps – in the first three holes.

Rory McIlroy says the Melbourne tournament ‘deserves’ its own place in the calendar due to its history. Photograph: James Ross/AAP

A mother called with some urgency to one son, “Where’s Benji?†having lost the other. The pair had been taken out of school, “just for the morning,†given it was a “special†day. As McIlroy sank his bogey putt, they were among half the crowd who vacated for the next tee, unconcerned that Scott’s par putt was still to come.

Golf Australia officials look back fondly at the 2011 Australian Open at Royal Sydney featuring Tiger Woods and its crowd of 100,000. Those with longer memories recall the days when Jack Nicklaus came and won the Stonehaven Cup six times in the 1960s and 1970s, when Australia’s fairways were held in the highest regard.

Those officials hope this year’s edition will return the Australian Open to its former standing. They expect the crowd record from 2011 to be exceeded at Royal Melbourne. Tickets are exhausted for the weekend at a course that was bursting with about 35,000 fans for the final day of the Presidents Cup in 2019.

McIlroy spoke before his round, saying this tournament “deserves†its own place in the calendar due to its history. An appearance fee reportedly as high as $2m might have influenced his choice of words. Yet he seemed genuinely happy to be in Melbourne, even if he admitted he liked the nearby Kingston Heath course more than this one. “It’s probably not the best course in Melbourne,†he said on Wednesday. “That’s my opinion, but certainly in the top 10 in the world.â€

Tram tee box marker detail. Photograph: Graham Denholm/Getty ImagesAustralian golfer Steph Kryiacou carrying the scores for Adam Scott, Rory McIlroy and Min Woo Lee. Photograph: James Ross/AAP

Many top international players are resting at the end of a long season. Others are playing the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa or a Woods-hosted tournament in the Bahamas. But there are more in Australia thanks to the Northern Irishman.

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The ranking points players earn from each tournament are affected by the calibre of the field, and McIlroy’s commitment this year (and next) make it a worthwhile stop for top 100 players such as Korean Si Woo Kim, Dane Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, and Kiwi Ryan Fox.

McIlroy, of course, has played the Australian Open before, and was champion in 2013. But he returns in 2025 as perhaps the biggest name in world golf, even if Scottie Scheffler might be its most consistent performer.

His commitment helped Golf Australia secure Crown as its naming rights sponsor and ensures the tournament is seen around the world. The world No 2 played one hole at five Melbourne golf courses on Monday for social media content. And tram-themed tee markers help the city’s distinctive charms reach a broader audience.

Cameron Smith lines up a putt on the 15th green on day one. Photograph: Graham Denholm/Getty Images

McIlroy’s appeal is aided by the likes of Cameron Smith and Lee, who have helped Australian golf stay relevant to a younger audience. Golf’s ageing participation base is as close as the sport has to an existential threat. So social media-friendly talents like “let him cook†Lee, alongside increasing uptake of social and simulator-based formats, and world-beating Australian women like Minjee Lee, Hannah Green and Grace Kim will help the sport remain relevant in the long-term.

But more immediately, it’s all about Rory. Running along a fairway beside McIlroy, one young fan wore his school uniform on Thursday morning, tie swaying in the wind. Another young fan was hanging off a tree, trying to get a precious video, his arm hanging out with iPhone in hand. The volunteer who holds up the “quiet†sign before each shot, a middle-aged woman, snuck a photo of the Masters champ as he approached the 14th tee.

It was not yet 9am. A drone buzzed overhead, under attack from two magpies. Body odour, amplified by the ample nylon, was permeating the busy crowds. One gentleman was already taking a business call to help plan the Christmas party. Another jumped on his phone to shoot off an email. But when McIlroy pulled out his driver, there were no distractions.

Scottie Scheffler is going for the four-peat.

The PGA Tour released the finalists for its Player of the Year (Jack Nicklaus Award) and Rookie of the Year (Arnold Palmer Award) honors Wednesday, and Scheffler once again headlines the ballot.

Scheffler, Tommy Fleetwood, Ben Griffin and Rory McIlroy are the finalists for Player of the Year; Michael Brennan, Steven Fisk, William Mouw, Aldrich Potgieter and Karl Vilips are the Rookie of the Year nominees.

Scheffler has won the last three Player of the Year awards, and when he won in 2024 he joined Tiger Woods as the only players to win in three consecutive years. (Tiger won five in a row from 1999-2003 and three in a row from 2005-2007.)

Scheffler is the favorite this year as well. McIlroy might have had the most important win of the season — exorcising his Augusta National demons and claiming the career Grand Slam — but Scheffler won two majors to McIlroy’s one.

Scheffler won six times total, hoisting trophies at The CJ Cup Byron Nelson, PGA Championship, Memorial, Open Championship, BMW and Procore. His two majors pushed his career total to four, and he’s now just a U.S. Open win away from becoming the seventh player to win the career Grand Slam. Besides the Masters, McIlroy won the Players and AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am; he also won the Irish Open, although that victory doesn’t count toward his PGA Tour resume.

Griffin won three times in 2025. Tommy Fleetwood won once, claiming the Tour Championship for his long-awaited first PGA Tour victory.

All five Rookie of the Year finalists won once each in 2025. Potgieter was the only rookie to qualify for the FedEx Cup Playoffs and finished 56th in the FedEx Cup Fall standings.

Both awards are determined by a member vote, with ballots closing on Dec. 12 and the winners announced shortly after.

Woods’ 11 Jack Nicklaus Awards are the most ever. Scheffler and McIlroy both have three.

Australian golf fans love Rory McIlroy but the Irishman doesn’t appear to love Royal Melbourne with the global superstar saying the famous course isn’t even the best in the city.

The world No.2 was swamped by a large crowd during the pro-am in a sign of things to come this weekend, with the Australian Open general public tickets sold out for the first time in years.

McIlroy will tee off in the opening round on Thursday with Australian great Adam Scott, whom he famously beat for the title in 2013, and another drawcard Min Woo Lee.

The game’s newest grand slam winner praised the tournament’s return from dual gender to its traditional format and its location on the Victorian sandbelt.

But McIlroy, who played five holes at five different Melbourne courses on Monday, wasn’t overly enthusiastic about Royal Melbourne, rating nearby Kingston Heath above it.

“I don’t want the membership to take this badly but it’s probably not the best course in Melbourne,” said McIlroy, who won the Masters this year to become just the sixth man to achieve the career grand slam.

He did at least add the course was still in the top 10 in the world and said it possibly played “funky” on Wednesday due to the northerly wind.

“I didn’t anticipate how many blind tee shots there was going to be, and it takes a little bit to figure out, it’s certainly not straightforward.

“I think as well, it probably plays better in the southerly wind rather than a northerly wind … it’s probably not a fair reflection on the golf course playing it in this wind.

“It would be good to play it in a few other directions, but it’s obviously an amazing golf course and I can’t wait to get out there and compete on it this week.”

The 36-year-old, who last played in the Australian Open in 2015, often credits his thrilling win over Scott at Royal Sydney two years earlier as a turning point in his career.

“I think about that tournament a lot and about what it meant,” McIlroy said.

“I felt at that point in my career I was at a bit of a crossroads … in 2013 I’d really struggled and I really do think that that win at the end of the year was a catalyst for what happened in 2014, which I’d say, up there with 2025, are the best two years of my career,” he said.

McIlroy felt the 121-year-old tournament deserved a standalone week rather than clash with Tiger Woods’s Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas plus another in South Africa.

He said Australia was “starved” of top-shelf tournaments.

“Australia has been a very big part of my golfing life and my golfing journey, going all the way back to playing the Australian Open as an amateur back in 2005 and 2006.

“I just think the quality of the golf down here, the quality of the players that have come from here.

“You look at an event like LIV (Golf) in Adelaide and the people that come out to that event and how excited they are that some of the top players in the world are down here playing, it just feels like this country is starved of top-level golf.

“A market like this with amazing fans and the history that it does have probably deserves more of a consistency of big players and big tournaments.

“This tournament in particular because of the history, because of the tradition, deserves to be a standalone tournament, a week on its own, and hopefully one day they could put together a schedule where the biggest and best tournaments in the world and the oldest and the ones with the most heritage can be elevated.”

The star trio tee off at 7.05am AEDT followed by Cameron Smith, who is playing alongside fellow Australian Elvis Smylie and 2016 Masters champion Danny Willett.

It has been over two years since the PGA Tour’s framework agreement with LIV Golf, but the reunification of pro golf still seems worlds away, according to stars on both sides of the aisle.

In a conversation with CNBC’s CEO Council Forum, Rory McIlroy, who has been a big proponent of bringing pro golf back together, was not optimistic about the state of a deal between the two sides.

“I think for golf in general it would be better if there was unification,” McIlroy said. “But I just think with what’s happened over the last few years, it’s just going to be very difficult to be able to do that.”

Bryson DeChambeau also doesn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. The two-time U.S. Open Champion believes the two sides are entrenched, and it will take time to get real movement on bringing the game back together.

“Man, I wish something major would happen, but I don’t think it’s going to in the immediate future. I think there are too many wants on both sides and not enough gives on the other,” DeChambeau said in a recent interview with FOX News.

“We’re just too far apart on a lot of things. It’s going to take some time, but ultimately, I do think the game of golf will grow internationally.”

Pro golf is dealing with its own Thanksgiving dilemma

By:

Sean Zak

Back in February, McIlroy implored players on both sides of the divide to put their differences aside and realize that they have all financially benefited from the fracture and now it’s time to bring the game back together.

“Whether you stayed on the PGA Tour or you left, we have all benefited from this,” McIlroy said at the Genesis Invitational at Torrey Pines. “I’ve been on the record saying this a lot: We’re playing for a $20 million prize fund this week. That would have never happened if LIV hadn’t come around. I think everyone’s just got to get over it, and we all have to say, OK, this is the starting point, and we move forward. We don’t look behind us. We don’t look to the past. Whatever’s happened has happened and it’s been unfortunate, but reunification, how we all come back together and move forward, that’s the best thing for everyone.

“If people are butt hurt or have their feelings hurt because guys went or whatever, like, who cares? Let’s move forward together, and let’s just try to get this thing going again and do what’s best for the game.”

McIlroy’s plea to unify the game came with a reasonable reminder that having the players who left for LIV return will benefit them financially in the long run. After Strategic Sports Group invested $1.5 billion into the newly created PGA Tour Enterprises last January, players were given equity grants in the business that come with an eight-year vesting period. As McIlroy noted, if the PGA Tour has all the best players in the world, the value of the business and their shares will go up.

“Like for us, they’ve all got equity in this tour,” McIlroy said. “Having Bryson DeChambeau come back and play on this tour is good.”

When LIV first arrived on the scene and fractured the professional game, McIlroy was the lead voice in the PGA Tour’s battle against the Saudi-backed league. While McIlroy still believes LIV’s emergence was bad for the health of the pro game, he sees that everyone has benefited from the fracture and pro golf can’t continue in its broken state.

“I didn’t feel that way initially because of the fracture,” McIlroy said. “It wasn’t good for the game. It wasn’t good for the overall game. It wasn’t good for either tour, I didn’t think. I think we’re both sort of like this has been great for the major championships. We all get together at the major championships and that’s been a really good thing, but for both tours, it’s unsustainable.”

In February, it appeared like the two sides were moving closer to a deal, but the tone shifted in March, and things have been quiet ever since.

Since then, LIV Golf has reapplied for Official World Golf Rankings points, made the change to go to 72 holes and added a new qualifying route with a Q-School tweak.

The move to 72 holes was made with the coveted OWGR points in mind, but it left McIlroy scratching his head.

“I think it’s a peculiar move because I think they could have got ranking points with three rounds,” McIlroy said at the 2025 Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship this month. “I don’t think three rounds versus four rounds is what was holding them back.

“It certainly puts them more in line with traditional golf tournaments than what we’ve all done. It brings them back into not really being a destructor and sort of falling more in line with what everyone else does. But if that’s what they felt they needed to do to get the ranking points, I guess that’s what they had to do.”

LIV’s changes signal that the breakaway league is full steam ahead under new CEO Scott O’Neil and doesn’t plan to go anywhere.

Neither McIlroy nor DeChambeau sees traction in the great golf reunification plan, but DeChambeau is hopeful that, over time, the game will eventually come back together.

“I won’t speak for anybody, but I think there will be improvements for the game as time goes on,” DeChambeau told FOX News. “It’s positive disruption, and it’ll take time to let the water settle and make a perfect scenario where we all come back together.

“Ultimately, I think it’ll be good for the game over time.”

Nov 27, 2025, 09:12 AM ET

Rory McIlroy doubts the fracture in golf will be repaired as the “irrational” spending of the LIV series has created such a gulf in the sport.

There had been hopes the acrimonious split which occurred when the Saudi breakaway league lured away many of the top stars with huge contracts in 2021 could be healed when a merger was proposed.

But over two-and-a-half years after that was mooted, the two parties appear to be no closer to a resolution.

“You see some of these other sports that have been fractured for so long,” McIlroy told CNBC’s CEO Council Forum. “You look at boxing for example, or you look at what’s happened in motor racing in the United States with Indy and NASCAR and everything else, I think for golf in general it would be better if there was unification.

“But I just think with what’s happened over the last few years, it’s just going to be very difficult to be able to do that.

“As someone who supports the traditional structure of men’s professional golf, we have to realise we were trying to deal with people that were acting, in some ways, irrationally, just in terms of the capital they were allocating and the money they were spending.

Rory McIlroy has cast doubt on a merger between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf. Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

“It’s been four or five years and there hasn’t been a return yet but they’re going to have to keep spending that money to even just maintain what they have right now.

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“A lot of these guys’ contracts are up. They’re going to ask for the same number or an even bigger number. LIV have spent five or six billion US dollars and they’re going to have to spend another five or six just to maintain where they are.

“I’m way more comfortable being on the PGA Tour side than on their side but who knows what’ll happen?”

LIV golfer Bryson DeChambeau admits the two parties are currently too far apart.

“I wish something major would happen but I don’t think it’s going to in the immediate future,” he told Fox News Digital.

“I think there are too many wants on both sides and not enough gives on the other.

“We’re just too far apart on a lot of things. It’s going to take some time, but ultimately, I do think the game of golf will grow internationally.”

Nov 16, 2025, 05:27 PM ET

An emotional Rory McIlroy hailed surpassing Seve Ballesteros by winning a seventh Race to Dubai title as more than he ever dreamed of.

McIlroy was beaten in a play-off by Matt Fitzpatrick in the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, having staged a dramatic late fightback with an eagle at the final hole.

While his Ryder Cup teammate celebrated a third win in the event, the Northern Irishman clinched the season-long crown to eclipse the late Ballesteros’ tally of six and move one behind record-holder Colin Montgomerie.

McIlroy told Sky Sports: “It’s amazing, I had a conversation with Carmen [Ballesteros’ ex-wife] before I went out to play today and she told me how proud he would have been.

“He means so much to this Tour and the European Ryder Cup team. We rally so much around his spirit and around his quotes and everything he meant for European golf.

“To equal him last year was cool, but to surpass him this year, I didn’t get this far in my dreams, so it’s very cool.”

Rory McIlroy has won a seventh Race to Dubai title. Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

McIlroy also set his sights on Montgomerie’s mark, adding: “I want it [eight titles], of course I do. I was the first European to win the Grand Slam and I would love to be the European with the most wins in terms of the Order of Merit and season-long races.”

Fitzpatrick had started the final day among a group of six players who were one shot behind McIlroy and Denmark’s Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen.

McIlroy began the final round in style and moved clear at the top of the leaderboard after going four under through the first seven holes.

But, as he stumbled, Fitzpatrick put himself in pole position for victory by landing a birdie at the last to complete a bogey-free round of 66 to leave both McIlroy and Neergaard-Petersen requiring eagles to force a play-off.

– Rory McIlroy loses playoff to Matt Fitzpatrick, wins Euro title

While the Dane faltered, the Masters champion sunk his putt from around 15 feet to extend the tournament into extra time, but it was Fitzpatrick who prevailed after both players missed the green with their respective approach shots.

Fitzpatrick said: “He [McIlroy] is one of only a few where you know you are going to a play-off. You are two clear with one to play and you know you are going to a play-off because he did it again in typical Rory fashion.

“I struggled at the start of the year, obviously, and to turn it round in the summer like I did, have the Ryder Cup like I did which is hard to top, but the way I played today — there was one bad shot all day. So proud of myself.”

Tommy Fleetwood was in a group of four players, including Neergaard-Petersen, who tied for third place after a final round 67, while Tyrrell Hatton, the only man to start the final day with a faint hope of denying McIlroy the Race to Dubai title, fell away to finish in a share of 14th.

DUBAI — Rory McIlroy didn’t just look spent Sunday evening, he sounded spent — finally, exasperatingly seated for the first time in hours. His voice was hoarse and his shoulders seemed to have exhaled just as much as his lungs.

McIlroy had lost a playoff but won a seventh career Race to Dubai title, all after eagling the 72nd hole — the combination of which would send any of us into the depths of our chair cushions. But at this point in his career — after a lifetime of lifting trophies in this Middle Eastern country alone — very few literal results could get McIlroy so emotional. It’s the results with special meaning that pull it out of him, and this was clearly one of those.

European golf followers wouldn’t be surprised. About a half hour earlier, McIlroy gave a greenside interview to Sky Sports interviewer Tim Barter, where the topic of Seve Ballesteros was raised. McIlroy had passed him into second all-time for Race to Dubai titles.

“It’s amazing,” McIlroy said, taking a deep breath. “I had a conversation with his wife, Carmen, before I went out to play today and she told me how proud he would have been.

“Yeah, it’s — aaah.”

Another big breath.

“I said this on this green last year to you,” McIlroy continued. “He means so much to this tour and to the European Ryder Cup Team. We rally so much around his spirit and his quotes and everything he meant for European golf.

“To equal him last year was cool but to surpass him this year — yeah, I didn’t get this far in my dreams. So it’s very cool.”

He teased it, so no, you’re not imagining it. McIlroy gave almost this exact same interview to Barter last year.

We’ve seen this a few times now — McIlroy getting choked up at the mere mention of Ballesteros’ name. He certainly made part of the reason clear in those answers, too. The Ghost of Seve is very real for anyone at the DP World Tour and anyone connected to Ryder Cup Europe. His quotes are on every commemorative wall. The silhouette of his swing is iconic. But for this reaction to arrive multiple times for McIlroy, in such similar scenarios — just 12 months apart — made me at least wonder if there was any extra meaning for him.

Few pros are as introspective and vulnerable enough to share those inner thoughts as McIlroy, so it’s possible he’d thought about it, too. Why does he not get nearly as emotional when discussing his Irish golfing heroes? Or Tiger Woods? Arnold Palmer?

The truth sits with Gerry McIlroy, Rory’s golf-obsessed father, who along with his mother, worked multiple jobs so their son could pursue what would end up being a Grand Slam golf career.

“I think Seve’s spirit lives on in the European Tour and in the European Ryder Cup Team, and he was always my dad’s favorite player,” McIlroy said during the first question of that press conference. His voice went from slightly-hoarse to something much more gentle. He blinked away a few tears and shrugged his shoulders.

“Yeah, he’s a beacon of what European golf stands for, and I … I just think about growing up and playing golf and my dad being such a big part of it, and then, his sort of connection with Seve — or Seve was the one that really inspired him to play golf. And then, I don’t know, it’s just a parallel to that.”

This was an answer getting pieced together one emotional word at a time, like extra cars to a train already in motion. But then he picked up steam and finished with a smile.

“When I hear Seve, it just sort of brings me back through my whole journey in the game, and yeah, it’s quite emotional.”