PLENTY OF HOYS AND LOWS! RORY

Great escape keeps Mcllroy in mix for his first Major since 2014

- ANDY DUNN

AS the sun began to go down on his opening round, it looked, for a moment, as though Rory Mcllroy was on his knees.

He was certainly on one of them, because it was the only way he could make a second attempt to extricate his ball from one of the pot bunkers that guard the 18th green.

Just after 8.15 on a Thursday evening, it seemed as though McIlroy's bid to end one of sport's most famous droughts might already be disintegrating.

Leave it in the trap as he had done the first time around, and the sort of score that had delayed McIlroy and his playing partners on the final hole the nine from Justin Thomas in the group in front – was a looming possibility.

And with that scenario would have gone his hopes of a fifth Major and his first since August, 2014.

Instead, he conjured up a miracle shot, somehow splashing his ball to 10 feet before promptly holing the par putt.

As the ball dropped, McIlroy produced that familiar short, violent fist-pump celebration.