The heat was on Rory McIlroy as he stood over a 14-foot birdie putt at the 72nd hole of the Dubai Desert Classic on Monday.
He was tied with golf’s ultimate villain — Patrick Reed — and he needed the tricky left-to-right putt to beat Reed and most of all, avoid a face-to-face playoff with the LIV defector.
“Sweeter than it should be or needs to be…,” McIlroy said moments after he pulled his ball from the cup and hugged caddie Harry Diamond.
It was sweeter because of who he beat in the process. The week in the desert began with a testy exchange on the practice tee and concluded with a final round run by Reed, who shot the day’s best score — 65 — and posted 18-under then watched McIlroy on television in the scorer’s room.
“It’s an awkward hole for me,” McIlroy said of the par five closing hole, where his second found the water to close his third round. “Driver’s too much, three-wood’s not enough. I tried to hit an easy driver.” That easy driver nearly found the water to the right of the fairway. McIlroy’s ball came to rest on the red hazard paint line. With an unpredictable lie, “I chose to do the smart thing and lay up,” McIlroy said of his thought process.
His third from 91 yards stopped pin-high, 14 feet to the left side of the hole. His winning put gave him a birdie-birdie finish and a 68 that got him to 19-under, one better than Reed.
“It was a battle all day. Honestly it’s been a battle all week. I really feel like I haven’t had my best all week but I just managed my game so well and played really smart,” was how McIlroy described his first outing of 2023. “I feel like I showed a lot of mental strength out there today, something to really build on for the rest of the year.
“There’s been a ton of positives this week but also been some things that I need to learn from and I need to try to improve on. “I’m going to enjoy this. This is probably sweeter than it should be or needs to be but I feel like I’ve still got some stuff to work on. It’s a great start to the year and a really good foundation to work from.”
The win marked the first time in his career that McIlroy began his season with a victory and it was his first win in one of the DP World Tour’s Rolex events.
