By Kent Gray
Rory McIlroy was rushing to the tee so couldn’t stop long to watch Harry Maguire hitting balls on the range, a pity given the world No.8 is a Manchester United fan.

“He’s actually a lot bigger than I realised standing besides him,” McIlroy said of the Manchester United skipper. “Like standing next to him, he’s a big lad. I wouldn’t want to get tackled by him, that’s for sure.”

The Pro-Ams at Emirates Golf Club proved fertile ground for star gazing with the Liverpool trio of Andrew Robertson, James Milner and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain partnering 2011 Masters champion Charl Schwartzel on Tuesday.

Say, Rory, if you could job swap for a day with another famous sportsperson, who would you be? 

“I just saw Lando [Norris] there coming off 18,” McIlroy said of the McLaren ace. “F1 driver wouldn’t be too bad. Would be exhilarating for a day at least. Might kill myself in the process.”

“I [actually] think about that quite a lot. I think the thing that I value so much about being a golfer is you’re your own boss, you turn up wherever you want to, basically and you make your own decisions. The responsibility is solely on you, which I think is a nice thing.”

McIlroy was a genuine fan-boy back in 2006 when he made his debut at the Dubai Desert Classic as a 16-year-old amateur. After playing, he made the most of a media credential to follow Tiger Woods.

“I had a better view than most being able to get inside the ropes. Tiger hit a 5-iron out of the right rough on 10 and stopped it on the green and to this day it was one of the best golf shots I’ve ever seen. Just sticks out in my mind and I was right there for it.”

So who would you follow this week if you were still 16?

“Me?” McIlroy joked. “No, I mean, there’s so many guys. Obviously Collin, Viktor. I’m thinking like Harrington, Poulter, Westwood, Stenson, Monty for sure. How many more times are people going to get a chance to see Monty play golf in this part of the world?”

After making the cut on the number with a 36th hole birdie and an unlikely Sunday charge before settling for a share of 12th in Abu Dhabi last week, McIlroy feels like he’s in reasonable early season shape. It’s great being back on a course where he made his professional breakthrough in 2009 and added his name to the Dallah for a second time in 2015.

“The greens seem to get progressively smaller as we keep coming back, so to see the new green complexes is nice, to get them back to their original shapes.

“As the trees grew up, everything got claustrophobic over the years and they have sort of tried to clear that out again too. It definitely doesn’t feel as constricting and it certainly doesn’t feel as constricting as even like last week where you had a lot of trouble on either side of fairways and water. There’s some opportunities where you can just step up and give it a rip which is nice.

“It’s a great golf course. It’s a fun golf course to play. Gives you plenty of opportunities to make birdies. I think everyone enjoys coming back here.”

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