Three putts from 2ft and a tee shot hooked into water at the last, no wonder it was a rueful Rory McIlroy who stepped from the 18th green at Dubai Creek, his hopes of victory in his first start of 2024 undone by costly errors. To Tommy Fleetwood, the spoils at the inaugural Dubai Invitational.
A final round duel between Fleetwood and McIlroy, Ryder Cup teammates, was never likely to disappoint. Fleetwood had taken the early initiative before McIlroy reeled off three birdies in a row from the 11th. On the par-three 14th, an iron played to tap in range provided McIlroy a wonderful opportunity to forge ahead. Instead, he three-putted to audible gasps from the galleries. “I pushed the first putt then I was guarding against that push with the one coming back and hit it left,” he later explained. “It was a bad sequence of events.”
