The numbers game doesn’t always add up, as Paul Waring – a player ranked 229th in the world – contrived to put on a masterclass in winging his way to halfway lead in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship at Yas Links where Rory McIlroy’s pursuit of the Englishman stalled with a late triple bogey that materialised from nowhere.
As Waring produced a stunning course record 61 for a record low 36-hole total of 19-under-par 125 on the DP World Tour, McIlroy – the world number three – shot consecutive 67s for 134 to lie nine shots adrift, although his scorecard, which featured eight birdies, was marred only by a six on the par 3 17th hole where the Northern Irishman’s charge was undone with his woes in escaping from a greenside bunker.
McIlroy, who remains set to claim a sixth career Harry Vardon Trophy for topping the European Tour’s order of merit when the season concludes at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai next week, admitted to making “a mess” of the 17th, when he needed two shots to extricate himself from the sand trap and compounded the error by then chipping 20 feet by the hole.
“I played quite nice up to that point, and I feel like I hit a nice should into 17, a nice flighted 5-iron, hit the downslope, trundled into the bunker ... there wasn’t a lot of sand wherever the ball was in the bunker there, and I just sort of made a mess of it from there,” explained McIlroy of his card wrecker.
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McIlroy has not played since the Dunhill Links a month ago and spent much of the past three weeks working on his swing in indoor studios. “With what I’m trying to do in my swing, sometimes I’ll get the clubface a touch open going back and then hard to square it up from there,” admitted McIlroy, adding: “I struggled a bit in left-to-right winds today but overall, I think with wanting to go out and perform well and score well, along with still trying to keep some of those feelings that I’ve had in my swing the last few weeks, I think it’s been a good couple of days.”
Waring entered the penultimate tournament of the season ranked 48th in the Race to Dubai standings and – with a five stroke halfway lead over a quartet of players, among them Tommy Fleetwood – set for a potential career-changing win with the possibility of earning a PGA Tour card through the pathway rankings.
“My putter is behaving. That’s, I’d say, a weak spot for me now and again but I’ve done a lot of work on it, and since moving over to Dubai, I’m very used to these style of greens, as well, so I feel like I can read the greens well. While I’m in the lead at the moment, and if we are rational about this, everyone is still going to fire a lot of birdies in there.
“So If I’m going to be involved on Sunday afternoon, I’ve still got to keep going the way I am and I know that. That’s a nice thing for me to know that, I just have to keep making birdies, keep going, keep going, and we’ll add them all up after Sunday afternoon,” said the 39-year-old Waring, whose only win on the DP World Tour came in the Nordea Open in 2018.
Shane Lowry added a 66 to his opening 69 to reach the midway point on nine-under-par 135 in tied 17th (10 off the lead and one stroke behind McIlroy), while Tom McKibbin – another of those players in contention for the 10 PGA Tour cards that will be dispensed after next week’s season’s finale in Dubai – overcame a double bogey on the second to claim five birdies in a round of 69 for 137 in tied-35th.
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