San Francisco – World number one Rory McIlroy will return to TPC Harding Park at the crack of dawn on Sunday to fight for a place in the semi-finals of the WCG Match Play Championship after darkness halted his match with England’s Paul Casey on Saturday.
The pair were deadlocked through 21 holes before bad light made it impossible to continue.
McIlroy, who squared the match on the 17th hole when Casey made bogey, could have ended it from 11 feet on the 18th and again from six-feet on the 21st hole but his last putt caught the edge and lipped out.
“I dodged a couple of bullets,” Casey said.
“I’m glad we’re teeing off tomorrow, simple as that. I was standing here on this green I thought I was done for the day and done for the week but the beautiful thing is we get to hit the reset button tomorrow at 6.45am and start again.”
McIlroy, who was hoping to make the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight in Las Vegas, was now resigned to continuing his own fight in the early hours of the morning.
“I think we were both struggling to read our putts there,” McIlroy said of the dark conditions.
“We wanted to try and get finished, but we’ll come back tomorrow morning and do it all over again.
“It was back and forth. I thought the match was pretty good. I made a couple key up-and-downs when I needed to coming down the stretch and had a couple of opportunities to close it out, one at 18 and one there, but couldn’t quite convert.”
World No 5 Jim Furyk awaits the winner after booking his place with an impressive back nine against former British Open champion South African Louis Oosthuizen.
One hole down through nine, Furyk rallied to make the final four for the first time in his now 15 attempts in the event, going one better than his quarter-final loss last year.
The other semi-final will be between big-hitting American Gary Woodland and England’s Danny Willett.
Woodland beat John Senden 5&3 win after birdies on four of the opening five holes saw him go 4 up, a lead from which the Australian could not recover.
Willett beat fellow Englishman Tommy Fleetwood 4&3 to make the final four in his debut appearance at the event.
Earlier on Saturday, McIlroy had routed Japan’s 16th seeded Hideki Matsuyama 6&5 to move through to the quarter-finals.
In other round of 16 action, Oosthuizen had beaten American Rickie Fowler, while Furyk took out countryman JB Holmes 5&3.
Willett upset countryman Lee Westwood 3&2 while Fleetwood won 2&1 against South African Branden Grace.
Senden took down 2012 champion and 2013 runner-up Hunter Mahan 2&1.
Woodland had beaten Australian Marc Leishman 2&1 to advance. – Reuters