NEWTOWN SQUARE, PA — As bad as Rory McIlroy felt after an opening-round 74 he described as “s***,” when he thought about it, he was in the same spot at this year’s PGA Championship as he was at the 2025 Masters after the opening round.
And that Masters ended with McIlroy completing the career Grand Slam.
The 2026 PGA Championship has one round remaining, but McIlroy is in much better spirits after a 4-under 66 in the third round that had him, at one point, tied for the lead. He was in 105th place following the first round.
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“I had a really bad finish on Thursday, but at the end of the day, I was only seven back,” McIlroy said after the third round in which he got to 5-under before a bogey on the par-3 17th.
“There’s a lot of golf and a lot of things can happen during the course of a golf tournament. I’ve progressively just got a little bit closer to the lead each day. But I’ve climbed my way out of that hole a little bit, which I’m proud of myself for doing that. But there’s one more day left and I feel like I’m — depending on what the guys do — close enough to the lead. I feel like I’ve still got a good chance.”
Since finishing his first round with four consecutive bogeys, the Jupiter resident and world No. 2 has nine birdies and two bogeys. He credits getting his driver close to where he wants it for the improved scores.
“I pride myself on managing my game well and learning as I go, and trying to, I guess, problem solve as the week goes on,” he said. “There were some things in my game, especially in the driver, I didn’t like on Thursday. So I went and I worked on it, tried to get a feeling that I was comfortable with.
“I’ve certainly driven the ball better the last couple of days. Still not perfect, but much better and giving myself opportunities from the fairways and being able to make more birdies because of it.”
McIlroy went from 111th in the field in strokes gained: off the tee, in the first round, to ninth in the second round. Then, at one point late in the third round, he was leading the field.
He also went from 27th to second to first in driving distance.
McIlroy set what he calls “little targets” when he came to the course the second and third days.
The first was to get back to even-par in the second round, which he missed by one shot with a 67 that put him at 1-over after 36 holes. The target for the third round was to shoot 5-under so when the leaders went off he would have been tied with them. He got there until that bogey on 17 when he went from the bunker to the rough.
McIlroy’s score, though, was indicative of the day. Aronimink Golf Course was playing about 3.5 shots easier for the third round than Round 2.
The second round saw 20 golfers under par. That number was well above 30 late in the day during the third round.
Players mostly credited that to more favorable pin positions, although some mentioned a calmer wind for most of the day. That wind got more gusty later.
“Overall, I think the pins today were a little bit more forgiving or they weren’t as perhaps crazy as they were a little bit the first few days where they were sitting on top of the ridges a lot,” said Palm Beach Gardens’ Kristoffer Reitan, who shot a 65 to get to 2-under entering the final round.
“So I felt like the birdie tries that you did have didn’t necessarily have like a fall-off right behind the hole. So it was a little bit easier to be a little bit more aggressive with the putts.”
Tom D’Angelo is a senior sports columnist and reporter for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at tdangelo@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Rory McIlroy climbing leaderboard at PGA Championship after 66
Reporting by Tom D’Angelo, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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