McIlroy ‘struggles’ to third round 68 ‘but nothing like the struggle when Billy interviewed me’

Rory McIlroy shot a third round 68 to continue his climb up the DP World Tour Championship leaderboard. David Cannon / Getty Images

DUBAI // Whatever troubles Rory McIlroy had in his frustrating Round 3 were nothing in comparison to the grilling he faced from a child interviewer earlier in the week.

While the world No 2 was carving out a 68, which he said should have been closer to a 62, his “Little Interview” with nine-year-old European Tour reporter Billy was going viral in cyberspace.

By the time McIlroy was signing his card, the five minute film had been viewed 115,000 times on YouTube and liked over 22,000 times on Twitter.

“I feel like it was a struggle out there at times this afternoon, but nothing like the struggle I felt on Tuesday, whenever Billy interviewed me,” McIlroy said.

“It was great fun. I had a lot of fun doing it, even though a nine-year-old was taking the whatever out of me.”

The questions put to McIlroy ranged from what he was thinking by his various early-career hairstyle fads, to who is his favourite female tennis player.

“I definitely had to put my thinking hat on to try to wiggle out of a couple of them as best I could,” said McIlroy, who finished Round 3 on five-under.

“I had said, ‘It’s fine, I’ll take it well and I don’t mind laughing at myself.’ And it was going nicely at the start, whenever the couple of hairstyles, that wasn’t too bad. And get on to some other stuff, and I was like, oh ...

“We were supposed to do it in half an hour, and we were there for an hour and a bit. It was all good fun. I had a great time. It’s great to do things like that. It’s nice to be able to show people I can still laugh at myself.”

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