Friday 6 May 2016 11:57, UK
Rory McIlroy dug deep to salvage respectability after enduring a torrid start to the defence of his Wells Fargo Championship title at Quail Hollow.
McIlroy dropped two early shots before running up a double-bogey six at the 18th, but he regrouped over the front nine and reeled off three consecutive birdies as he returned a one-over 73 - seven shots behind early leader Anirban Lahiri.
The two-time champion struggled for directional control off the tee in the early stages of his round, and he missed a seven-foot par putt on the 12th - his third - before he missed the green at the par-three 13th and was again unable to get up and down.
McIlroy, who fired a course-record 61 on his way to a seven-shot win last year, steadied the ship with a run of four pars, but he came to grief at the tough 18th when he blocked his approach, pitched to 15 feet and then three-putted - including a miss from inside three feet for bogey.
The 27-year-old lifted his spirits when he holed from 20 feet for his first birdie of the day at the second, but he gave the shot straight back when he pulled his drive at the third and could not go at the green in two.
But McIlroy two-putted from distance for birdie at the long fifth, and a superb 230-yard tee-shot to five feet at the next set up another before a further well-controlled two-putt from 55 feet at seven got him back to one over.
He did well to get up and down for par at the eighth, and a cast-iron par closed out a tough day at the office, whose playing partner and close friend Rickie Fowler opened with a 71 despite finding water off the tee at the 17th and carding a double-bogey five.
"It sort of was a tale of two nines," he said afterwards. "I've been working a lot on the range and I was still in range mode on the front nine. I didn't have my scoring head on.
"I was thinking too much about my golf swing and got caught up in that. I need a bit more work on the range, because I had a lot of misses to the left."
McIlroy played down a bizarre incident at the sixth when a member of the gallery threw a golf ball on to the tee which initially startled the defending champion, Fowler and Hideki Matsuyama.
"Yeah, it was sort of weird," McIlroy added. "That's never really happened to me before. It was a golf ball with an ear plug stuck on it, so it was sort of strange. Charlotte's finest sorted it out and got him off the property, thankfully."
