Rory McIlroy happy with 67 despite costly mistakes at Tour Championship
Thursday 20 September 2018 22:18, UK
Rory McIlroy insisted his game was still "trending in the right direction" and vowed to cut out the mistakes after opening the Tour Championship with a 67.
McIlroy got off to a flying start at East Lake when he raced to the top of the leaderboard with four birdies over the first six holes, but although he picked up three more shots, two bogeys and a double-bogey six at the 12th left him two adrift of early leaders Tiger Woods and Rickie Fowler.
But the 29-year-old insisted he was happy with all aspects of his game and remained confident of being in contention for the title on Sunday as he bids to head into next week's Ryder Cup on the back of his second victory of the season.
"It was a great start being four under through six, unfortunately, I just didn't keep it going," he said. "But if I keep swinging and hitting the ball like that and giving myself chances, I should be right up there at the end of the week.
"I'm making the birdies. I made seven birdies out there today, which is great. The good stuff is in there and just need to limit the mistakes and it'll be all good."
McIlroy also defended his decision to miss the opening event of the FedExCup Play-Offs, The Northern Trust, in order to rest and fine-tune his game, and he believes the changes to the end-of-season format next year will be beneficial.
"I just wanted to be at my best for this, for these three weeks," he added. "It's good to have the luxury of taking a week off and you're not going to drop too many places. I was speaking to Tiger in Boston the week after, and he was saying he dropped maybe five or six spots by playing, and I dropped six spots by not playing. I made a good decision in the end.
"I think going from four events to three events next year, it doesn't give you that luxury. You need to go and play all three to have a chance. But I think the changes to the Tour schedule next year are great, and it will encourage guys to play more.
"I always feel like I start the year off a little bit behind everyone else because I have to go over to Europe and then come back here. I turn up in LA, and guys have already played 10 events in the season, and that's my first one.
"It'll encourage guys to play a bit more because of the bonus at the end of the regular season, and then obviously you go into the Play-Offs, and there's a lot of money to be had."
Live PGA Tour Golf
