News Letter's Johnny McNabb reacts to Rory McIlroy's Open showing and Matthew Fitzpatrick leaderboard surge at Royal Portrush

Transcript

00:00So, Jonny, you're out watching Roy McIlroy today. What did you make of his round?

00:04Yeah, I said in my piece there, he struggled for probably momentum in the first five holes.

00:08I think there was a couple of birdies, but there was a couple of bogeys as well,

00:10and then a lot of powers where maybe his driving just wasn't great,

00:14and then the putts just weren't falling.

00:16Good to see two, obviously, birdies in the back nine, and he's in minus three head end of the weekend.

00:21So, yeah, in terms of the experience, the crowd was unbelievable.

00:24To be honest, my watch beat about the high noise, so not yet. It was a really good experience.

00:29And how do you sort of rate his chances going into the weekend?

00:31Yeah, good. Yeah, I looked at the leaderboard here at the time we were recording.

00:35He's going to be about five or six shots off the lead, but that can all change in Lynx golf.

00:40Rory's no stranger to this course, so he'll be hoping he'll really need to shoot probably a 65, 66 tomorrow to really be up there.

00:48And Tom and Kevin didn't fare quite as well today. Looks like he might miss the cut.

00:51Yeah, it looks like he's going to miss it by one. I just read his post-match sort of quote,

00:56or post-round quote, sorry, and he's pretty annoyed. They put it lightly.

01:01So, if they miss it, if they miss it by one, it's going to be really, really annoying for him.

01:04And Darren Clarke as well, I think he's definitely going to miss it. He finished on plus six.

01:08And as you record, Fitzpatrick nine under for the tournament. He's had a great tournament, isn't he, so far?

01:12Yeah, I couldn't believe it. Whenever I was chatting to people today, I said probably minus seven would have been leading it.

01:17And then, obviously, Brian Harman had a round of his life. He's good at Lynx.

01:22Obviously, he won a couple of years ago at Liverpool. So, yeah, Fitzpatrick at the time of a quarter of minus nine,

01:27and that's really good going in these conditions.