Rory McIlroy is tied at the top of the leaderboard at the DP World Tour Championship, but the Northern Irishman faces plenty of competition, including from two LIV golfers
Rory McIlroy is tied at the top of the leaderboard at the DP World Tour Championship, but the Northern Irishman faces plenty of competition, including from two LIV golfers Rory McIlroy is tied at the top of the leaderboard at the DP World Tour Championship, but the Northern Irishman faces plenty of competition, including from two LIV golfers
Two members of the LIV Golf circuit in Joaquin Niemann and Tyrrell Hatton will be hoping they can stop a Rory McIlroy double at this week’s DP World Tour Championship.
McIlroy is tied at the top of the leaderboard alongside Antoine Rozner and Rasmus Hojgaard at 12-under-par after 54 holes, and will go into Sunday’s final round as the favourite to become champion. The Northern Irishman headed into the tournament with one hand on the season-long Race to Dubai title, with only Thriston Lawrence able to stop him winning a sixth Tour crown.
Lawrence is required to win the event and hope McIlroy finishes outside the top 11 to become Race to Dubai champion, but with Lawrence in the 17th and McIlroy eight shots ahead, it seems more than likely that the latter will come out on top.
A Race to Dubai win will be McIlroy’s third on the bounce, but this time around he will be hoping to also take the DP World Tour Championship crown with him too, as he did in 2012 and 2015. He has plenty of competition around him though, not only by those with him tied at the top, but the chasing pack too.
Two members of the chasing pack included Niemann and Hatton of LIV, who will hope they can be the one to end McIlroy’s hopes of a double. Niemann finds himself closest out of the breakaway league pair, with the Chilean sat just two shots back at 10-under for the tournament.
The Torque GC captain kept his name in the hunt after posting a three-under 69 in round three, topped off with a tap-in birdie at the final hole, after just rolling an eagle attempt past. A win in the desert would top off an impressive year for Niemann, who was only just pipped to season-long individual title on the LIV circuit by Jon Rahm.
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Playing alongside Niemann on Saturday was fellow LIV star Hatton, whose third round was one full of drama. On the scorecard it was a fairly simple one, as the Englishman carded a one-under 71 to leave him at nine-under for the week, three back of McIlroy and co at the top.
As is often the case though, Hatton found himself embroiled in controversy after snapping a club in anger at the par-five 14th. “Tyrrell is not the bad guy he comes across here,” Sky Sports pundit Paul McGinley said of Hatton post-round: “But his behaviour is not acceptable from what we have seen.
“I think tonight when he cools down, and his team and wife have words with him, there will be a lot of humble pie. He will be really embarrassed with what he did today and how behaved. He will know, you almost hit rock bottom before you decide you have got to do something about this, and I think this could be a day where he realises, ‘You know, I have got to change. This is not acceptable’.”
Mirror – Sport
