Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods both looked short of form yesterday as they opened their campaigns for this year at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship.
World No. 1 McIlroy, playing for the first time in competition with his new Nike golf clubs, had two double-bogeys en route to a three-over par 75 that left him trailing down in 62nd place.
Playing partner and second-ranked Woods was wayward off the tee, as he matched four birdies with four bogeys to come in at level par.
The third member of the day’s marquee grouping, three-time former winner at Abu Dhabi Martin Kaymer, bettered them both with a one-under 69 that left him four shots off the early pace set by Jamie Donaldson of Wales.
McIlroy admitted that he had lacked sharpness.
“I feel like I was just a little bit rusty,” he said.
Woods said that narrow fairways, thick rough and cross-winds had made it a tough round for all the players.
How McIlroy would fare with his new clubs was one of the talking points of the day. He had a solid enough start, but things took a distinct turn for the worse at the short 15th, where McIlroy sent it way long and right.
The 23-year-old Ulsterman promptly failed to find the green with his chip from thick rough.
The result was a double-bogey five and a three-shot swing in favor of Woods and Kaymer, who both had birdies.
Donaldson’s 67 saw him take the clubhouse lead from among the morning starters, one ahead of Denmark’s Thorbjorn Olesen and Pablo Larrazabal of Spain.
A further stroke back were George Coetzee of South Africa, Henrik Stenson of Sweden, Liang Wen-chong of China and Ricardo Santos of Portugal.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with