Rory McIlroy has made a good start at the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai as he bids for a record-equalling eighth order of merit title, shooting a three-under 69 to lie in third place and two strokes off first-round leader Joost Luiten.<\/p>\n
McIlroy is seeking to claim the year-long award \u2014 crowning the best No. 1 player on the DP World Tour Championship that season \u2014 for the fifth straight year and would be guaranteed to do so with a victory at Jumeirah Golf Estates this week.<\/p>\n
The world No.2 is currently second in the Race to Dubai standings behind Spain\u2019s Eugenio Chacarra, who shot 72 on Thursday to already lie three strokes behind the Northern Irishman.<\/p>\n
Patrick Reed, third in the standings and the only other realistic title contender, failed to turn around his recent slump in form and shot 75.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jon Rahm, who needs to win and hope for Chacarra and McIlroy to finish way down the leaderboard, opened with a 71.<\/p>\n
Luiten handled the Earth course best on a day when the wind picked up and thick rough lining the fairways and around the greens proved to be punitive.<\/p>\n
The Dutch player went out in 31 after five birdies in his front nine and was even par coming home, with a six-foot birdie putt at the par-five 18th wrapping up a round of 67.<\/p>\n
With so many points on offer this week, a win would come with a huge reward for any outsider like Luiten, and not just because of the.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Also up for grabs this week are 10 places on next season\u2019s PGA Tour, available to European tour members who are not otherwise exempt.<\/p>\n
Luiten isn\u2019t currently one of those 10. He was a stroke clear of Jakob Skov Olesen, who is among those in line for a PGA Tour card.<\/p>\n
Victor Perez, Gregorio De Leo, Freddy Schott and Francesco Laporta were alongside McIlroy a further shot back after their 69s.<\/p>\n
The only Australian in the field was the evergreen 46-year-old Adam Scott, who made a solid start with his one-under 71 that left him tied for 16th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy has made a good start at the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai as he…","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"csco_display_header_overlay":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_volume":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[295,4989,15,77,5839,2734,4678,54,3359,17],"class_list":["post-20429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rory-mcilroy","tag-adam-scott","tag-eugenio-chacarra","tag-golf","tag-jon-rahm","tag-joost-luiten","tag-jumeirah-golf-estates","tag-middle-east","tag-patrick-reed","tag-race-to-dubai","tag-rory-mcilroy","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@fogolf\/117607905599254357","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}