The Holywood star battled a cold putter all week at East Lake, but after making birdie at his last two holes to close with a level-par 70 and finish 23rd on six-under, he immediately targeted the Amgen Irish Open and the BMW PGA.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are two big weeks for me to try to extend my lead in the race to Dubai,\u201d said McIlroy, who needs two more season-long titles to match Colin Montgomerie.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s become a pretty important thing for me. It\u2019s chasing a little bit of history there. I want to put my head down and play well those couple of weeks; two home tournaments for me, Ireland being my national open and we live pretty much on the course at Wentworth.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo a big couple of weeks just to try to play well, but also sharpen up different aspects of the game going into the Ryder Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n
McIlroy topped the six automatic qualifiers for Luke Donald\u2019s European team from Robert MacIntyre, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose, Rasmus Hojgaard and Tyrrell Hatton.<\/p>\n
Who will join them in New York remains to be seen after Hojgaard claimed the final automatic spot in the side when he tied for 13th at the Betfred British Masters behind Sweden\u2019s Alex Noren and left Shane Lowry needing a pick.<\/p>\n
Noren shot 67 to win by a shot on 16-under from Hojgaard\u2019s twin brother Nicolai and New Zealand\u2019s Kazuma Kobori at The Belfry.<\/p>\n
Lowry, Sepp Straka, Ludvig Aberg, Viktor Hovland, Matt Fitzpatrick and Matt Wallace are the next six in the final standings and it\u2019s more than likely that at least one of them will lose out as Spain\u2019s Jon Rahm also needs one of Donald\u2019s six picks on September 1.<\/p>\n
How recent results, and this week\u2019s Omega European Masters, affect Donald\u2019s thinking remains to be seen, but Noren believes he\u2019s on the outside looking in, even after ending a seven-year wait for his 11th DP World Tour title.<\/p>\n
As overnight leader Fitzpatrick slipped to sixth after a 74, Noren made a six-footer for bogey at the 18th to win by a shot from Kobori and 2023 Ryder Cup star Nicolai Hojgaard, who could still join his twin brother at Bethpage.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s probably the biggest goal we have together,\u201d Rasmus said. \u201cI think if it would happen this year, it would be amazing. But I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll both fight to be able to do it another time if it didn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donald and his vice-captains know big hitting will be key in New York, which may stand against Fitzpatrick and help the case of players like Nicolai Hojgaard or the in-form Marco Penge, who tied for sixth at The Belfry.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Canice Screene tied for 41st behind Swedish amateur Meja Ortengrenon in the LET\u2019s Hills Open as Max Kennedy finished 23rd, 10 shots behind Italy\u2019s Filippo Celli, in the Dutch Futures after a closing 68 in Spijk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Holywood star battled a cold putter all week at East Lake, but after making birdie at his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[13230,2000,299,5187,4287,4321],"class_list":{"0":"post-370813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-brian-keogh","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-rory-mcilroy","13":"tag-ryder-cup"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115086132943213122","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}