Rory McIlroy Wins at the WGC-Dell Match Play, But It Was the Consolation Final

Rory McIlroy beat world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler in a consolation match for the ages.

The WGC-Dell Match Play got its dream matchup between Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, the first- and third-ranked players in the world, but there was one catch: it was the consolation final. 

While Sam Burns and Cam Young went head-to-head for the WGC-Match Play title, Scheffler and McIlroy teed off ahead to compete for third place. 

McIlroy held the lead over Scheffler throughout the entirety of the match, even going 3 up after three consecutive birdies on holes 3-5. Scheffler, who admitted he had trouble focusing throughout the consolation match, battled back to a deficit of just 1 down, but McIlroy ultimately ran away, winning 2 and 1. 

“I'm a competitive guy and I snapped back into it when I was—I think I was 3 down maybe through 5, and I was like, 'oh, my gosh, if I don't snap back in, I'm going to be done on hole 12.' So it was good to fight back but just couldn't hole the putts this week,” Scheffler said.

To close out the match, McIlroy birded the par-4 16th and halved the hole with Scheffler on 17, making a 6-foot par putt for his final stroke of the grueling day. 

“I guess it's called a consolation match for a reason. Consolation was going out there and winning a match this afternoon, obviously, playing the No. 1 player in the world. So I just had to regroup and try to—I got off to a decent start and got up on Scottie early. And then we were trading a few bogeys here and there. It was a bit of a pillow fight in the middle of the round,” McIlroy said. 

Although McIlroy lost to Young in the semifinal, he’s confident in the state of his game heading into the first major championship of the year. Throughout the next week, McIlroy said he’ll give all his attention to fine-tuning ahead of Augusta National. 

“I feel a lot better about things now compared to this time a couple weeks ago after the Players Championship. So try to rest and recover a little bit over the next couple of days, and, yeah, all eyes on Augusta and just making sure that the game's ready,” McIlroy said. “But everything feels in really good order, just work on some things that I know that I'll need for that week and just make sure I'm ready and rested.

Scheffler, however, noted that he has a few things to work on heading into Masters week—particularly on the greens—but remains satisfied with the overall status of his game. 

“So I would say in the beginning of the week, I didn't feel like I was hitting my putts as solid and as the week went on, I just felt like I was hitting putts more and more solid and I was hitting a lot of quality,” Scheffler said. “So I have a couple things to work on before Augusta, but definitely plenty of confidence going in and great memories from Austin. It's been a fun three years for this tournament for me and I'm sad that it won't be back.”