While McIlroy found birdies hard to come by at times, Hidalgo had no such trouble as the 27-year-old reeled off seven in a row from the second. <\/p>\n
After a bogey at the ninth, Hidalgo picked up four more shots in the first six holes of his back nine. <\/p>\n
His momentum stalled with a double-bogey seven on the 16th after hitting his second into the water, but after steadying himself with a par on 17, he finished with a birdie four. <\/p>\n
“I really feel for a few moments I was playing the PlayStation, to be honest,” said Hidalgo, who beat two-time major winner Jon Rahm in a play-off to win his national title last year.<\/p>\n
“Every single shot was directly to the pin. Even the one I missed, it was directly to the pin, like the 13 one I go over, but it was straight to the pin.<\/p>\n
“[I’m] so happy. Not going to lie, really, really happy. Obviously now you remember the 16th, but you need to remember the few recoveries I did. The one on 17 was pretty important, and obviously the birdie on 18 to finish with good feelings obviously for tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
Saddier, however, was seemingly unaffected by Hidalgo’s stunning early move as the 33-year-old mixed seven birdies with three bogeys to hold the 54-hole lead and put himself in position to land a second DP World Tour title. <\/p>\n
European Ryder Cup players Shane Lowry (70) and Tyrrell Hatton (71) failed to make a big move, while Northern Ireland’s Tom McKibbin carded just one birdie in a disappointing 74.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While McIlroy found birdies hard to come by at times, Hidalgo had no such trouble as the 27-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4106],"tags":[2826,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-403378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115158964271538140","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403378","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=403378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}