Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa and Tyrrell Hatton take on 'The One Yard Fairway'
Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa and Tyrrell Hatton took on an incredibly tough challenge in Abu Dhabi. Did any of them accomplish the task?
Ahead of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, the first Rolex Series event of the 2022 DP World Tour season, Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa and Tyrrell Hatton took on a near-impossible task - to hit a one-yard wide fairway.
In an epic opening Hero Challenge of the year, defending champion Hatton joined four-time major champion Rory McIlroy and the tour's reigning No. 1 Morikawa for a star-studded spectacle on the drag strip at Yas Marina Circuit on Yas Island, Abu Dhabi.
What followed was an enthralling physical and psychological battle, as all three battled themselves, the elements and the slimmest of targets.
Despite the extreme difficulty of the challenge, each of the golfers, all winners on the PGA Tour, were becoming very frustrated as the day went on.
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The One Yard Fairway #HeroChallenge pic.twitter.com/hyQMDMeoWG
— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) January 21, 2022
Morikawa has returned to the DP World Tour in 2022 as the reigning Race to Dubai champion. He became the first American to achieve this title back in November.
At the halfway stage of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, both McIlroy and Morikawa made the cut on the bubble at 3-over-par. Hatton finished on 1-under-par after 36 holes with a 77 in round two.
Following on from the success of the live shows between 2016 and 2020, last year saw a new era begin with three different style Hero Challenges from three locations across the schedule.
Ian Poulter and Hatton were challenged to make a hole-in-one with just 50 balls each in Scotland, the Guinness World Records title for 'Fastest hole of golf by a team of four' was broken at Valderrama, before the year closed out with a live showpiece at TopGolf Dubai.
As in 2021, each Hero Challenge will feature some of the best and brightest players in the world in a short-form social and digital video output, which will be supplemented by a more in-depth ‘behind-the-scenes’ broadcast show from each event.
