Q. First things first, I've got to ask you. You've been in the scorer's hut for quite some time. I understand there's a situation which has caused you to have a 2-shot penalty in the 12th. Can you tell us about what happened?
RORY McILROY: Yeah. They showed me a video from 12. Hit my first chip shot from down on the bottom of the hill, then get up, came back down and rolled into a divot.
And then as I went to sort of just get a feel for the lie, the close-up of the camera, you can see like a little piece of grass around the divot sort of lies down as I put my club down behind the ball, and it doesn't -- I guess the grass doesn't return back to its original position.
And I doubt like -- obviously there's no intent. I play by the rules. I feel like this is never really -- I try to do everything that I can to never end up in these positions.
But just by looking at the video, like it doesn't look -- it doesn't look very good. Obviously that wasn't my intent. I'm just trying to get a feel for the lie. The ball is in a sort of bottom of a sandy divot. I'm trying to feel like if I can get a 54-degree, like, onto the back of the ball, but in the process, this piece of grass has sort of laid down, and it doesn't -- you know, the technical -- I guess the technical term for the rule is if you press down on the piece.
I don't feel like I pressed down. But at the same time, I don't want the perception of, like, people thinking like I got away with something either. So I'm happy to take a 2-shot penalty and move on and move into tomorrow.
Q. Overall, how do you reflect on your day's play?
RORY McILROY: I felt like I played pretty well. It was really like that bad swing on 12 where I missed the green right and made double, which is now a quad. But apart from that, I felt like I hit the ball pretty nicely. Yeah, I hit my irons nice, drove the ball well.
So, yeah, it was a round where I felt like I could have been obviously a lot better, but there was enough encouraging signs in there to go out and hopefully shoot a good one tomorrow.
Q. How much experience in this sort of situation where you're trying to win a championship and also close down the Race to Dubai, what have you learned from past situations you can use this week?
RORY McILROY: Golf tournaments are long. There's a long way to go to the finish line, especially in situations like this where it's not just this week, it's next week as well, and you sort of try to -- they're both their own individual tournaments, but you're almost trying to treat it like any other event, just trying to build on each and every day.
And I felt like I could have got off to a better start today, but as I said, I felt like I saw enough encouraging signs in my game to go in and shoot a good one tomorrow and try to get myself back in the tournament.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports