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Woods open to regular McIlroy battles

Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy's rivalry is emerging © Getty Images

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Tiger Woods can envisage a bright future for a series of one-round shootouts between the world's top two players, following his defeat to Rory McIlroy on Monday.

Woods and McIlroy took each other on at the Duel at Jinsha Lake in China on Monday, with the Northern Irishman winning by one stroke after a 67.

It was a rare success for McIlroy in one-on-one challenges against Woods, and gave him revenge for the six-shot thrashing the American doled out at the World Golf Finals in Turkey earlier this month.

But despite his defeat at Jinsha Lake, Woods is keen for the format to continue across the coming years. "This certainly was not my usual way I spend Mondays but to have this many people come out and watch us play golf... was something special," Woods said.

"These events don't happen that often and it was just great to see everyone so excited to see us come here and excited to watch us play.

"So as far as doing something like this down the road, it would be fun. We're ranked one and two in the world respectively and to have matches like this to promote the game of golf is what it's all about."

McIlroy added: "It was a pretty exciting day and the match was pretty close all day. I got off to a good start and had a little bit of advantage for the first few holes but then Tiger birdied a few on the back nine. All I was trying to do was to keep myself ahead and I managed to do that."

In the world rankings, Peter Hanson is up to a career high of 17th after beating McIlroy to the BMW Masters title on Sunday.

World rankings: 1. Rory McIlroy (NIR), 2. Tiger Woods (USA), 3. Luke Donald (ENG), 4. Lee Westwood (ENG), 5. Justin Rose (ENG), 6. Adam Scott (AUS), 7. Webb Simpson (USA), 8. Bubba Watson (USA), 9. Brandt Snedeker (USA), 10. Jason Dufner (USA), 11. Louis Oosthuizen (SAF), 12. Steve Stricker (USA), 13. Matt Kuchar (USA), 14. Keegan Bradley (USA), 15. Dustin Johnson (USA), 16. Nick Watney (USA), 17. Peter Hanson (SWE), 18. Zach Johnson (USA), 19. Phil Mickelson (USA), 20. Bo Van Pelt (USA).

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