The world’s top two golfers, Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods, both missed the cut in their first tournament of the season at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship on Friday.
McIlroy finished well outside the cut line, while playing partner Woods appeared to have squeezed into the weekend before he was hit with a two-stroke penalty for a rules infringement that sunk his challenge.
By the time the dust had settled, England’s Justin Rose was the leader at the halfway stage at eight under par after a 69, with rising Danish star Thorbjorn Olesen (69), Jamie Donaldson of Wales (70) and Spain’s Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano (67) all a further stroke back.
Photo: AFP
However, it was the astonishing double demise of McIlroy and Woods that was the story of the day.
Playing for the first time in competition with his new Nike clubs after signing a mega-money, long-term deal with the US sportswear giant, the 23-year-old McIlroy clearly failed to get the hang of his new sticks.
Starting the day well down the field after an opening 75, McIlroy had three straight pars, but that failed to steady his ship and three bogeys in the next four holes sent him spiraling to six over, well outside the projected cut line.
He birdied eight and nine to pick up some hope, but bogeys at the 10th and 14th all but sealed his fate in a tournament where he was runner-up last year with his old Titleist clubs.
Another wild drive into desert scrub at the last summed up his day as he eventually came in with another 75, which left him tied for 99th position and with no hope of making it through to the weekend.
The last cut McIlroy missed was at the US Open in San Francisco in June last year, which ended a run of three missed cuts in four tournaments.
It was shortly after that that his game suddenly picked up again and he went on to win the USPGA title at Kiawah and the money lists on both sides of the Atlantic.
McIlroy does have the excuse that Abu Dhabi was his first tournament since winning the World Tour Championship in Dubai early last month.
However, he will need to return to the driving range for some much-needed repairs in the four-week break that follows before the tournaments in the US leading up to the Masters, the first of the four majors at Augusta National.
“I knew it was going to be a tough week with everything going on, but I was just looking forward to getting to the golf course and getting back to what I do and what I am comfortable with,” a clearly frustrated McIlroy said. “It just didn’t work out like that.”
Playing partner and Nike stablemate Woods also struggled to find his game as he bogeyed four of the first five holes.
The 37-year-old world No. 2 produced a battling back nine with three birdies in a row from the 14th to get back to level par. A bogey after another wild drive at the 17th popped him over par, but he shot regulation on the last to come in with a 73.
That left him at one over for the tournament, with the cut projected at two over. However, it was then announced that he had been hit by a two-stroke penalty for a rules infringement in sand at the fifth hole, turning a five into a seven.
That was enough to seal his fate.
“It’s tough because I didn’t get off to a very good start today and I fought and got it back,” he said of the penalty stroke drama.
“I was right there and I felt that if I had close to even par, I had a chance going into the weekend, being only eight back. Evidently it wasn’t enough,” Woods added.
It was also the first tournament of the year for Woods, whose focus this year is on winning a 15th major title, four-and-a-half years after his last success at the 2008 US Open at Torrey Pines.
Tournament leader Rose said that his recent surge of form came down to an improved fitness regime and softer shoes to take the strain away from his suspect lower back.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier