By Dana O’Neil, CNN
Newtown Square, Pennsylvania (CNN) — With his own third round of the PGA Championship finished by midafternoon, Rory McIlroy got to think about how to spend the rest of his Saturday afternoon.
He did not, understandably, have grand plans.
“I’ll watch a little bit (of the golf) and go back to the house and put the feet up,” McIlroy said. “I started ‘Batman: The Dark Knight’ last night, so I’ll try and finish that. That’s one of my go-tos to try to forget about things.’’
At the risk of playing spoiler to McIlroy’s plans, the movie ends with a plot twist in which the superhero intentionally poses as the villain, launching a Gotham-wide manhunt to find him.
Sometimes life can, in fact, imitate art.
Save for US-based Ryder Cups, McIlroy almost always plays the good guy role. So popular is McIlroy here at Aronimink Golf Club, you’d think rainbows and daisies might sprout in his wake.
As he approached the 11th tee on Saturday, two little boys crouching behind the ropes feverishly waved at the Northern Irishman like he was in a parade, not the No. 2 golfer in the world headed to work.
But on Sunday, when he returns to the course for the final round of the PGA Championship, McIlroy will be the evil force everyone else will be trying to stop. Already the owner of this year’s Masters title, McIlroy will look to greedily become the first player since Jordan Spieth in 2015 to start the year two-for-two in majors.
Claiming every inch of moving day, McIlroy charged from plus-1 to minus-3 for the tournament with a 4-under round of 66 on the day, moving him to just one back of the leaders when he exited the 18th green. It’s his 25th major championship round of 66 or better. Only Tiger Woods, at 28, has more.
There is, admittedly, a crowd at the top and some big names to contend with – Jon Rahm, Xander Schauffele, Patrick Reed and Justin Rose among them – but McIlroy is again in contention.
“I feel like I did enough to think I have a chance going into tomorrow,” he said.
He put himself in such an enviable position after turning both his game and the Aronimink Golf Club on its ear. Or maybe, in his parlance, on its arse.
It was, after all, a mere three days ago that McIlroy sat down behind a news conference microphone and promptly described his opening round 74 indelicately and yet accurately with the Irish version of a favorite American curse word. Ours rhymes with lit; theirs with right. McIlroy’s game was neither lit nor right; it was the other.
On Saturday, when asked to describe his round, he smirked. “Better,” he said. “I said no profanity today, so keeping it clean.”
His turnaround came on a sun-splashed Saturday when the previously unforgiving course seemed to yield ever so slightly in the morning before punishing the afternoon players with gusty winds.
The real villain of this tourney has been Aronimink itself, or at least the PGA of America’s treatment of it. Players have kvetched – nay whined? – about impossible pin placements. They have argued that, while it’s made the tournament entertaining, it hasn’t made the golf great. Scottie Scheffler said Friday’s pin placements were the toughest he’d ever seen on the Tour.
“I mean, kind of absurd,” he added.
McIlroy chimed in with his own gripes, arguing that pars were too easy, birdies too hard and bogeys the worst anyone could do, all of it adding up for a clogged leaderboard rather than some lines of delineation.
That leader board certainly stayed clogged through Saturday. As Moving Day turned Moving Evening, five players were tied for the lead at 4-under for the tournament and seven – including McIlroy – were a shot back from 3-under.
After better results, McIlroy softened his stance, if he didn’t back down entirely. He argued against the use of the word “manipulated” to de