Friday 18 November 2016 11:34, UK
Rory McIlroy lifted his spirits as he bounced back from a "flat" opening day with a second-round 68 at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai.
McIlroy's first-day 75 was his worst score in 29 rounds over the Earth Course at the Jumeirah Golf Estates, but he rallied early on Friday morning and carded six birdies against a pair of bogeys to move to one under for the event.
The defending champion offset a birdie at the second by dropping a shot at the short fourth for the second day running, but he suddenly found his range with the putter and reeled off three consecutive birdies from the sixth.
The 27-year-old bogeyed the ninth, but he emulated Thursday's birdies at 14 and 18 in an error-free inward nine, holing out on the last an hour before the final pairing of Lee Westwood and Julien Quesne had begun their rounds.
McIlroy, out in the second group of the day alongside Ryder Cup team-mate Andy Sullivan, admitted afterwards it was rare for him to have such an early tee time.
"It's been a while actually," he told Sky Sports 4. "Obviously it's not what I'm used to here. I played well here quite a few times in the past and yesterday was disappointing, but I played a bit better today. Hopefully I'll get a couple more hours in bed tomorrow morning.
"Any time I get to play with Sully, I really enjoy it. We both played better and had a good laugh out there and enjoyed it. And in fairness, I was looking forward to getting out this morning, because I felt the greens yesterday afternoon got very grainy and quite difficult to read. I felt like I had a chance to hole some more putts and I was able to do that.
"Mentally yesterday I was still on holiday I think. I was very, very flat and just wasn't really with it, wasn't at the races. Yeah, I felt a bit better out there today, but yeah, just wasn't quite with it yesterday.
"I guess if I'm within sort of eight or nine shots going into the weekend, I still feel like I have a decent chance. If I'm too far back, then I don't think I'll be able to make up that much ground. But if I can keep improving each and every day, then I might not be too far away at the end of the week.
"I've shot some really good scores here in the past, and if I can emulate that and shoot a couple really good ones over the weekend, I'd be happy enough going into the break."
