McIlroy Battles Hay Fever & Dizziness As Royal Melbourne Bites Back

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Grand Slam winning Rory McIlroy revealed he battled hay fever and dizziness early in his bogey-laden opening round at the Crown Australian Open.

It was though Royal Melbourne was biting back after McIlroy’s pre Crown Australian Open comments suggesting Ausralia’s continual rated No. 1 course was not in view the best in the country.

A full house crowd was on the tee from as early as 7am eagerly anticipating McIlroy’s arrival and they were not disappointed when the threesome including fellow Masters champion Adam Scott and Scott’s Aussie compatriot Min Woo Lee arrived on the 10th to kick start their rounds.

The Grand Slam winning McIlroy quickly delivered with a 1oth hole birdie but back-to-back bogeys at 11 and 12 kind of left the fans kind of dumbfounded ahead of the World No. 2 producingn a topsy turvy display of five birdies but an uncharacteristic six bogeys in his one-over 72 for a share of 51st place.

McIlroy as winner of the 2013 Australian Open ended his round sharing 57th place seven shots adrift of the leading clubhouse trio of Aussie Elvis Smylie, Kiwi Ryan Fox and Mexican Carlos Ortiz very late in the round of the co-sanctioned event.

Both Scott and Lee were at two-under after rounds of 69.

And before indicating he was going to take ‘lie down’ McIlroy spoke of his early round health issue.

“I’ll take it easy. I struggled with hay fever early on and then I took a Benadryl and I feel a bit drowsy, so I might go take a nap,” said McIlroy.

“I woke up at 4. Woke up at 4 today. But that’s a sort of curtailed warmup. If the tee time wasn’t so early, I like to get to the course, usually two and a half, three hours before my tee time, but I don’t want to be turning up to the course at four in the morning”.

McIlroy’s round included birdies from his first hole at the 10th as well as birdies at 14, 15 and the second and third holes while he dropped shots at 11, 12, 16, 1st, 4th and seventh holes.

He was initially asked his reaction to the crowd present when teeing-off.

“Yeah. I mean some crowds for seven o’clock in the morning. Yeah, it was great.” he said.

“It was a wonderful atmosphere to play in. Obviously playing with Adam in Min Woo too. Yeah, it was unbelievable. It was really cool to see how many people were lining the fairways and framing the greens and stuff, so yeah, it was cool.

“The support had been amazing. I think the welcome has been so warm and yeah, it’s been a pleasure to be here and hopefully I could just play a little bit better over the next three days”.

And McIlroy was also quizzed on the weather conditions and how they affected play.

“It’s tricky. Very, very tricky. Greens are getting firm,” he said.

“It was a good thing they didn’t cut them today, it would’ve been unplayable. But yeah, really tricky conditions. Felt like I could have shot under par or shot something in the sixties, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s going to get too far away today.

“So I limited the damage and hopefully conditions are a little better over the next few days and could make a run”.



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