The PGA Tour Leaderboard has Rory McIlroy first at the Dubai Desert Classic over Tiger Woods and the field at the European golf tournament and the PGA leaderboard has the Phoenix Open with YE Yang leading and in the Middle East the top players are looking to continue into the weekend and the Northern Irish star has been playing very well and is back on top once again.
McIlroy has been playing very well at the tournament and he started off with a fantastic 63 in the first round to take the lead and at the time Woods was within five strokes, but now he is back after McIlroy finished with a 70 on Friday and now he has a one stroke lead over Brooks Koepka and Danny Willett is three back and Woods is down at 44 after putting up a 73 after his score of 68 and now he is one for the day on Friday and three under for the tournament and he will have to play much better to get back into the swing of things.
Woods already has played better than he did last week at the Farmers Insurance Open and that was his first real competition of the year and after putting up some ugly numbers, he didn't miss the cut, but he missed the secondary cut and now he has the chance to get back on track here in Dubai. Woods had won the Farmers eight times and that included last year and he was usually great at Torrey Pines, but he was not sharp last week and now he hits the European Tour and it comes after he won five times last year on the PGA Tour. Woods won back his number one ranking in the world last year from McIlroy and now both will be looking to win majors this year and woods may have his girlfriend Lindsey Vonn around more, as she will be out of the Olympics after injuring her knee.
Willett had the clubhouse lead heading out of his round on Friday and McIlroy finished strong to take it back and Woods and the Irish star were paired together for the second straight day and he finished with three under on his total score after being four under on Thursday and now he looks to get back in the mix to try and win the tournament for a second time. McIlroy has been excellent throughout the tournament and now Woods is eight shots back and he had two birdies on the day and he added three bogeys, while McIlroy ended up with four birdies in just the first 10 holes of his day.
The two stars will look to stay in the mix on Saturday and Woods has some work to do and this comes after Woods struggled hard last week and getting some solid play on the back end could help push into the rest of the season. McIlroy sits at the top of the leaderboards heading into the weekend in Dubai and he usually is a good winner when he has the lead from the first two days of the tournament, winning the last time he did that as well.
Check here for the leaderboards from ESPN for the Dubai Desert Classic and more from Dubai.
