How Rory McIlroy’s stats compared with Tommy Fleetwood during the opening round of the HSBC Championship

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Rory McIlroy already looks to have an uphill battle on his hands if he is going to win the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship for the first time in his career, with the Northern Irishman five shots back of Tommy Fleetwood after the opening round.

Rory McIlroy is obviously the marquee name in the field this week at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship at Yas Links, with the 35-year-old leading the Race to Dubai standings with the penultimate event of the season underway.

McIlroy is working through some swing changes having not featured in a tournament for several weeks now. And it seems that McIlroy was content with his opening round as he carded a five under par round of 67.

How Rory McIlroy compared with Tommy Fleetwood during the first round at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship

Unfortunately for the four-time major champion, he is already some way off the lead. Tommy Fleetwood tied the course record as he fired himself to the top of the leaderboard with a 62.

Fleetwood has won the tournament twice before – at the previous venue – and he has already triumphed up against McIlroy, having won the Dubai Invitational at the very start of the year.

Unsurprisingly, Fleetwood finds himself near the top of the standings in a number of areas. And the statistics appear to show the difference between himself and McIlroy across the opening day. The pair’s rankings amongst the field are shown in brackets.

McIlroy losing a lot of ground to Fleetwood once he is off the tee

Clearly, McIlroy has a huge advantage over Fleetwood when it comes to distance off the tee. But it is almost alarming just how different their green in regulation percentage is considering how often the pair found the fairway.

Not only did the Englishman find the green more often, but he also holed more putts than his Ryder Cup teammate.

Obviously, McIlroy would have never expected for his game to show drastic improvement in the first round back. But at a time when he is working on his full swing, he may perhaps be a little alarmed that his approach game and his putting appears to be some way off right now.