Rory McIlroy was rolling in Round 2 of the WGC-HSBC Champions. He had just birdied the par-4 fifth to grab the outright lead at Sheshan International Golf Club and added another at the par-3 sixth – his fourth consecutive birdie – to move two clear.
And then he hit the brakes. Or, more appropriately, he started to go awry.
“You start missing a couple of fairways, missing a couple of greens and this course all of a sudden gets pretty tricky,” McIlroy said. “It’s easy from the fairways, but I sort of veered off them a little bit around the middle of the round.