The Dubai Desert Classic has Rory McIlroy leading the field heading into Friday and Tiger Woods is on the leaderboard as well and the tournament comes as the Waste Management Open is going on in Phoenix with Phil Mickelson and round two of the Omega from Emirates GC is coming up and McIlroy will be teeing off at 3:25 am ET, while Woods will be at the same time and he comes in four under.
Woods is five back of McIlroy for the tournament and his start is a much better performance than he had last week at the Farmers Insurance Open when he didn't make it to Sunday and McIlroy comes in nine under for the tournament and he is looking to get the year started off right. Woods put up a 68 on Thursday to get off to a nice start and after flaming out at the Farmers and that came as he was the defending champion and he won five times on tour last year and now he has the chance to push that bad performance behind him.
McIlroy lost his number one ranking to Woods last year and he came into the day on Friday with a slight lead and the two players were grouped together for the first set and now they will play again with each other and McIlroy comes into the tournament at number six in the world and he was excellent on the day, hitting all but two of the fairways and he nearly hit every green as well and now he has the chance to push his lead even more. McIlroy went five under on the back nine and he had an eagle on the day and Woods was able to rebound from his terrible performance at the Farmers last week.
Woods has won the Farmers seven times in his career and he usually kills it at Torrey Pines and now he is halfway around the world and he finally got his first birdie of the year and he looked much more comfortable on the course than he did last week. Woods said afterwards that he didn't give much thought to his performance last week and said he felt good on the course and that he was close on a lot of shots and now he has the chance to keep things on the good side while he is paired with McIlroy again.
Check here for the Dubai Desert Classic live coverage with Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.
