Rory McIlroy’s superpower about to satisfy its match

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Rory McIlroy has been having a 12 months: inexperienced jacket; profession Grand Slam; Open Championship in his homeland; stirring Irish Open win; and, after all, member of the victorious European Ryder Cup staff at Bethpage Black late final month. His 2025’s not finished but, both. Not even shut, as evidenced by McIlroy’s whereabouts this week: New Delhi, India, the place he’s not solely making his first-ever go to to the colourful nation of 1.45 billion but additionally taking part in a golf course that may check his recreation in ways in which no different venue has this 12 months . . . or, for that matter, nearly every other 12 months.

We communicate of the Lodhi course at Delhi Golf Membership, a prestigious hangout a brief hop from the Taj Mahal and this week the host web site of the DP World India Championship, which has managed to draw to its tee sheets a glittering roster of Europeans, together with McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, Viktor Hovland and Shane Lowry, plus a few notable Individuals in Ben Griffin and Brian Harman.

All of those gamers are accustomed to competing in massive, burly ballparks the place the technique on most par-4s and just about all par-5s begins and ends with full-sending driver off the tee. Longer the higher, accuracy be damned. The Lodhi course, nevertheless, is neither massive nor burly — it's quick by trendy Tour-setup requirements (6,912 yards) and tight by any golf course’s requirements. The typical width of the fairways, in keeping with the membership’s web site, is 25 yards, together with a chute on the sixteenth fairway that has a knee-knocking choke level measuring a mere 14 yards large. Making the touchdown zones really feel narrower nonetheless are the partitions of native bushes and bushes flanking them. Extra hallways than fairways. “The intimidation issue,” mentioned Shubhankar Sharma, a standout Indian golfer who has gained twice on the Asia Tour and completed eighth on the 2023 Open Championship.

<img class="lazy g-block-image__file" alt="delhi golf club" srcset="https://golf.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/delhigc.jpg?width=300 300w, https://golf.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/delhigc.jpg?width=720 600w, https://golf.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/delhigc.jpg?width=1280 900w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, (max-width: 600px) 50vw, (max-width: 900px) 33vw, 900px" src="background-image: url(https://golf.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/delhigc.jpg?width=30);" loading="lazy" decoding="async"/> Good luck! courtesy delhi golf membership

Sharma has a home-field benefit given he grew up taking part in the course (“it felt like I by no means left,” he informed reporters earlier this week). Identical goes for an additional Indian star, Anirban Lahiri, who performed his first junior occasion at DGC in 1999 and, in 2015, gained the India Open there. Which isn’t to say Lahiri mastered the course from the soar. Removed from it. “Horrible,” is how he described his first a number of begins on the structure designed by five-time Open Championship winner Peter Thomson. “You possibly can’t try to overpower this golf course,” Lahiri mentioned Tuesday. “I feel that was what I attempted to do after I was youthful and extra fearless.”

Lahiri mentioned he lastly unlocked the course by studying the place to be aggressive and the place to put off the fuel. “I pulled the motive force out of the bag, one thing you’ll discover quite a lot of gamers doing this week,” he mentioned. “I’d be very shocked to see too most of the stars carrying a driver.”

Lahiri has shared that recommendation with a number of caddies this week, together with McIlroy’s looper, Harry Diamond, who, it appears, handed on the intel to his boss.

“I’d say that the following time I hit my driver will probably be in Abu Dhabi,” McIlory joked Wednesday, referencing the upcoming Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship. “I don’t assume I’ll hit a driver this week. I simply don’t really feel like the chance is well worth the reward. I’d quite depart myself two or three golf equipment again and hit a 7-iron right into a par-4 as an alternative of hitting a wedge the place when you simply get it off-line right here and the ball is gone. You’re hitting it into jungle and also you’re not going to have the ability to get it out. You possibly can rack up a really massive quantity in a short time.

“You simply preserve hitting it down the center, hit it 260, 250, 260 each single time, and when you do this, then you are able to do very properly round this golf course.”

Who knew the answer to golf’s distance drawback was indica bushes and sticker bushes?

Hovland had seen and performed solely 5 holes at DGC when he spoke to the media earlier this week, however he’d seen sufficient to grasp the course’s problem. “I’ll simply sort of stick with the 3-iron or perhaps 3-wood a pair locations right here and there,” he mentioned. “There will probably be quite a lot of irons this week.” Hovland added that shedding the motive force is simply what the physician ordered for the sore neck he’s been combating this 12 months, an damage that, controversially, sidelined him for the ultimate day of the Ryder Cup.

Brian Harman mentioned iron play will probably be so prevalent this week and good decision-making so important that Delhi GC, in methods, feels extra like a links-golf check than a parkland one, irrespective of that the course is greater than 600 miles from the closest shoreline.

And all these irons off the tee? They’ll end in one thing else pro-golf followers don’t see a lot of: mid- and even long-irons into greens. ”I like programs like this much more, since you simply hit a wide range of completely different golf equipment extra usually,” Ben Griffin mentioned. “Whereas in America we’re so used to hitting perhaps drivers and wedges much more. It’s one thing I haven’t competed on in fairly some time to be sincere with you. Excited for it.”