THE GRAND prize may have slipped through their fingers, with England’s Robert Rock claiming the title, but Ulstermen Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell yesterday had numerous reasons to be cheerful after opening their seasonal campaigns in the Abu Dhabi championship with a runner-up and third place finish respectively.
US Open champion McIlroy moved to the top of both Ryder Cup qualifying tables – the world points list and European money-based list – after finishing runner-up in Abu Dhabi for a second successive year, while McDowell’s hole-in-one on the 12th hole was the catalyst for a stirring finish and earned him a bonus prize of a three-night stay per year for the rest of his life at the seven-star Emirates Palace resort.
“I played solid golf, had a few opportunities (in final round) and didn’t quite take enough of them,” said McIlroy, who closed with a 69 for 12-under-par 276, one shot adrift of Rock. “It’s still a great way to start the season. I just couldn’t get any momentum going.”
McIlroy has finished fifth-third-second-second in his four appearances at the event.
Still, McIlroy’s runner-up prize of €231,349 moved him up to fourth on the European Tour money list and to the head of affairs in both qualifying tables for the European team for the Ryder Cup match in Chicago in September. McDowell’s tied-third finish – alongside Tiger Woods and Thomas Bjorn – moved him to seventh on the European points qualifying for the Ryder Cup.
McDowell – who moves on to this week’s Qatar Masters – closed with a 68 for 277 which earned him €107,577 in his opening event of the season and one which he termed “bizarre” after breaking his driver in the course of hitting a shot in Thursday’s first round and then finishing yesterday with a hole-in-one that gave him “an unbelievable” back nine.
He followed up that hole-in-one on the 12th by chipping in for birdie on the 13th and, then, grabbed an unlikely birdie on the 18th. “I hit one of the worse lay-ups known to man on the 18th and then thinned a gap wedge into the grandstand only to see it ricochet back to six feet,” he recalled, holing the putt for a closing birdie. “Sometimes the golf gods giveth and sometimes they taketh away and the last seven holes today they definitely gaveth.”
Having finished just a shot behind the winner, McIlroy could perhaps reflect ruefully on the two-shot penalty imposed for flicking away sand during Friday’s second round, but nobody begrudged Rock – who lost a play-off to Shane Lowry in the Irish Open at Baltray in 2009 – claiming his second career tour win.
