Rory McIlroy finished day one of the The 2016 Ryder Cup with a brilliant eagle and then gave a celebration that showed he means business this week at Hazeltine National.

Europe fought back from 4-0 down to trail 5-3 heading into day two, with McIlroy's quick putt down the hill on the 16th to seal victory in the fourballs alongside Thomas Pieters the final act of a pulsating day.

The eagle sparked wild fist-pumping celebrations and even a bow from the Northern Irishman, who was eager to show the partisan Minnesota crowd that Europe are in this competition to the bitter end.

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"I think just on behalf of the European Team as a whole, we're absolutely delighted to go into tomorrow with not quite the deficit that we were facing going into this afternoon's fourballs," he said.

"As you could probably imagine, the mood in the team room just there was quite buoyant and I definitely feel like there was a shift in momentum this afternoon. Hopefully we can carry that into tomorrow morning.

"Even before I hit that putt, I wanted to put an exclamation point on that session for us. I honestly actually thought about the celebration before I hit the putt. I knew it had a good chance of going in. It was downhill, I just had to get it started on the right line and gravity did the rest.

"It's a hostile environment out there and I just want everyone that's watching out there to know how much this means to us, how much it means to me personally and obviously us as a team.

"We're not going down without a fight. It was four-zip after the morning. We've pulled it back a good bit and we plan to pull it back even further going into tomorrow.

"I bowed to them, said 'You're welcome for the show', and we move on."

The next act of that show begins at 0735 in the morning when McIlroy and Pieters go out again to face Rickie Fowler and Phil Mickelson in the foursomes.