'It would have sucked to be going home' - McIlroy happy to make Sawgrass cut
Rory McIlroy avoided having to add an extra event to his pre-Masters schedule when he brilliantly birdied his final hole to dip inside the cut line at The Players.
With his back injury “progressively getting better each and every day”, the defending champion was flirting with his first missed cut for nine months when he bogeyed his 13th hole to go back to level for the day.
At two-over for the championship, he came to the 582-yard ninth needing a birdie to make the weekend and hit a towering three-wood that rocketed 284 yards over trees to the heart of the green, setting up a simple two-putt birdie.
His one-under 71 left him ten shots behind early halfway leader Xander Schauffele, seriously denting his chances of winning at TPC Sawgrass for the third time.
But he was pleased to finish strongly and give himself two more rounds, unlike Shane Lowry, who added a 73 to his opening 76 to miss the cut in back-to-back weeks for the first time in more than four years.
“It would have sucked to be going home this afternoon, so to hang around and hopefully play two more days, that's a win,” said McIlroy, who lamented a lukewarm putting display.
A weekend off would have meant adding a second event to his schedule before he heads up Magnolia Lane next month.
“I think it does wound your pride,” he said of missing cuts. “I have 280-odd starts on the PGA TOUR and I've missed maybe less than 30 cuts. So I'm proud of that.
“But then in golf, as everyone knows, you have to sort of blow it off and move on to the next thing.
“But if I had missed the cut, I probably would have added an event going into the Masters, so hopefully I'm here for the weekend, and I don't have to do that.”
McIlroy made just one putt outside 10 feet — a 12-footer for par at the 18th but his playing partner Schauffele rapped in two 22-footers and a 37-footer in an eight-birdie 65 to lead by a shot in the clubhouse on 10-under from Cameron Young and by two from Canadian Corey Conners, who both shot 67.
As for Lowry, the former Open champion has struggled to get back to the high level of play he showed before losing that three-shot lead with three holes to go in the Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches.
He missed the cut by a shot at last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational and nursing the hangover of the quadruple bogey eight he made at the 18th in an opening 76, he paid for his inconsistency from tee to green yesterday and shot a 73 that left him on five-over and heading back to Palm Beach.
While he missed two cuts in a row in February 2023 — in Dubai and Phoenix two weeks later — the last time Lowry missed the cut two Fridays running was November 2021.
Annabel Wilson (eight-over), Anna Foster (nine-over) and Aine Donegan (14-over) also missed the cut in the LET-sanctioned Women’s Australian Open at Kooyonga Golf Club near Adelaide.
While France’s Celine Herbin shot a three-under 69 to lead by a shot on six-under at the halfway mark, Wilson shot 75, Foster a 77 and Donegan a 78 to miss out.
