Rory McIlroy enters final round of Truist Championship in big deficit | Golf Central | Golf Channel

The Golf Central crew breaks down Rory McIlroy’s Round 3 performance at the Truist Championship, highlighting how he can overcome the big deficit he’s in. Also, Shane Lowry and Sepp Straka share their grinds in the latest round. #GolfChannel #PGATour #Golf #Truist
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Rory McIlroy enters final round of Truist Championship in big deficit | Golf Central | Golf Channel
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Golf Central on YouTube is brought to you by the new elite family of woods and irons from Callaway. Round three of the truest championship of the Philadelphia Qriket Club beared its teeth a bit today. Some tricky winds, fast greens, quite a few short putts missed. Lots of lip outs. Overnight leader Keith Mitchell with three three putts. 34 in all, but still with a chance. Supposed to be warmer, not as windy tomorrow. Ry Maroy drove it poorly today. under 69. A lot of work to do. He is six shots back. Here’s Todd now with Shane Lowry. Shane, really nice day. You come out with those two early birdies and then there’s a bit of a fight out there. How would you describe the challenge this golf course gave you in these conditions? Yeah, I mean it was very tricky. It was tricky to get it close. Um, obviously the first thing you had to do was put it on the fairway cuz if you didn’t put it on the fairway, it’s quite tricky. I felt like I did that well. Um and then you know you’re just trying to hit on the green and two put and get out there and when you get your chances you try and take them. It’s it’s funny you know we came here at the start of the week and everyone’s talking about you know someone’s going to shoot 59 but you know you see us out there today it was a grind and it was good fun. I I honestly I stepped onto this course uh when I got here and I loved it the very minute I saw it. It looks looks great. It’s old school. It’s like northeastern course. Um so yeah it was good. Over the last two days you picked up more than six shots on the field with your approach game. Uh, how would you describe your iron play right now? Yeah, it’s been pretty good. I’m probably doing that though because I’m not driving the ball very far. So, I’ve got chances to pick up strokes on the on the field. Honestly, my driver is going pretty straight, but not very far. Um, so I’m I’m in position a lot where I can uh hit good iron shots and I feel like my iron game is pretty good. And um so yeah, that’s that’s probably one of the reasons, but obviously I’ve been pretty good as well. All right, last two days, mother nature has given you guys some interesting conditions. Tomorrow the wind is going to be a little calmer. Um what are you expecting from this golf course and what are you expecting the how the field will play this course? Yeah, so if if the wind is calmer tomorrow, I expect couple of people to go out and shoot really low numbers. Um just hope one of them is me. But yeah, I I think you know if if the conditions are favorable tomorrow like Thursday, I think you know a couple of people will shoot a low score and obviously put some pressure on on us at the top end of the leaderboard. Final thing. Um, what do you want to challenge yourself to do tomorrow to cross the line? I just want to allow myself to be myself tomorrow and I I I feel like if I can be myself tomorrow that, you know, I can do something great. You just get the sense he is on the verge of the best golf he has played certainly since Royalport Rush. We’re going back there. He won the Open six years ago. Uh, this the fifth time in his career he has had the 54 hole lead or share of the lead. uh only at Port Rush did he convert it didn’t play well but that was a long time ago at Oakmont 2016 US Open that final round could be a good pairing for uh both Shane Lowry and Septra the final group tomorrow they were RDER Cup partners in Rome a few years ago and they went one and one as a team so they’ll be relaxed the vibe should be good I joked about it with Amanda on the telecast yeah this might be the last time they’re cheered together uh because it it’d be far different cry likely at Beth Paige Black. But you and I have talked about it difficult to root against a Rory or a Shane Lowry. A Ryder Cup though is different. So here is Sepraka. He is leading the field strokes gain putting good player. I mentioned this. He’s fourth Bedex Cup standings this year and 17th in the world. He won the American Express earlier this year. Has three top 10 finishes in all. Uh, it’s good work in 2025 for the Austrian strongman. Here’s Sep Straka. Five birdies, just one bogey on a challenging day today with all this wind. What are you most proud of as you look back at this round? Uh, really happy with the driving today. Uh, the first two days the driver was terrible. I don’t even want to know what it would have been like in this wind uh to be driving it like that. So, I really struck the driver right in the middle of the face today all day and um very happy with that. There’s another stat that’s jumping out and that is your putting. Uh you’re leading the field when you signed your card in strokes game putting. Have you been working on trying to get your putter to a new level? Uh not really. It’s been an all year process. I would say we changed some things in the offseason and uh no I think maybe just I’ve had this really good speed on the greens uh all week and I think that especially on on these greens there’s a lot of pitch to them so you really have to marry your speed with the with the line and I feel like I’ve done a pretty good job of that this year. Except you’ve been on a lot of leaderboards. You obviously won this year as well. How would you describe the comfort and confidence you have heading into this final round trying to win a signature event? Um yeah, after yesterday I was just trying to find my driver, so I don’t know about confidence, but uh yeah, I’m just trying to go out there and play some good golf. Um you know, you’re never really comfortable when you’re around the lead. Uh but it definitely feels a lot better than my first time trying to win at the Honda. All right, we’ll jump to tomorrow. What do you hope to be committed to? Uh just the process. So just trying to, you know, play the golf course the way I should play it. Um, you know, these fairways are running out a lot, which is, uh, hard to kind of gauge what what club you want to hit off the tee and hard to hit fairways because of that. So yeah, just trying to put the ball in play, get in the fairway and then try to attack with my iron play. What do you like with Seep Straa? Well, Todd hit on it. You know, he’s been factoring in so many tournaments this year and you begin to wonder why. And it’s like, look, I mean, I talk about it all the time. The most important aspect of this game is how close you’re hitting your iron shots. And would you believe that only one person on the PGA Tour and that being Scotty Sheffller is hitting their irons better than Seb Straa is. I mean, throughout his career, with the exception of that one year in 2022, you’d say he’d been good to very good iron player. And this year, just exceptional, off the charts. And the more I see of him, the more I really enjoy watching him play some golf. Well, he not just a breakthrough player now. He’s arrived. Yeah, of course. He’s won three times. Yeah, he’s uh he’s here and not just uh an Austrian. That’s where he was born, but he’s Georgia boy. You saw that yardage book sticking out of his pocket. He played for the Georgia Bulldogs, as did Keith Mitchell. I tell you what, I don’t know what uh Chris Hack I mean, he’s got a knack for choosing players and creating good golfers. All right. Uh Rory Mroy is six shots back after an off day with his driver. Has he come from that far back? He has twice. What hasn’t he done? Well, 2016 TPC Boston from six behind to win. He also won the FedEx Cup that year. In 2022 toward championship, FedEx Cup yet again from six back to run down Scotty Sheffller. So, where where are we with Rory? Look, he was on the range afterwards and and rightly so. You know, if you watching today, you noticed he he would hit shots and then his arms would collapse afterwards. is like usually when you’re finishing with your arms this close to your neck, you’ve come a little bit from the inside. You got a little bit stuck. I think that explains the two-way miss. A lot of hooks followed by a big push to the right. Uh so perhaps he was just getting just a fraction a little bit too underneath it. Uh needs to get more on top of it. So, you know, went to the range, try to sort that out. Um but, you know, I think Shane Lowry alluded to the fact that they were expecting to see 59s this week. Well, if the wind’s not blowing tomorrow, the golf course is soft. We’ve already saw a 61 round number one by Keith Mitchell. You alluded to the fact that Rory’s come from six back. So, it’s it’s it’s certainly in there. Could Could you imagine if he you know, birdies for the first six tomorrow makes that charge how how amped up it will be? Yeah, it’ll be it’ll be nuts. But again, it’s going to take something like 61. 61 tomorrow. It’ll take something like 62 at the highest. Okay. Uh Rory Moy on the range. Todd Lewis reporting that He wasn’t thrilled even after this session. He didn’t go out there with a launch monitor. He noticed that. I do recall the players. He went out there and worked it out on his own. I think it was after Thursday’s round. Didn’t drive it particularly well. We were all in agreement that we like this sort of this this new approach. Just try to work it out yourself. Don’t get too hung up on a lot of mechanics. Yeah. I mean, you know, even as poorly as he drove it today, he’s still fourth uh in strokes gain off of the D for the week, but yeah, three of 14 fairways. Uh you know, that that’s going to be one of his worst performances of his career in terms of finding fairways. So, he hasn’t been particularly sharp this week uh with his irons. He hasn’t been particularly sharp around the greens. Uh he’s been very sharp uh prior to today off of the tea and very sharp throughout the week uh on the greens. So, and having said all that, uh, he’s just, uh, six back.