McIlroy’s attention can’t be solely on his golf game as it once was.Play all three legs of the FedExCup Playoffs on host courses, plus PGA TOUR ShotLink integration provides real-world data only in EA SPORTS PGA TOUR. And he spent a good portion of his media availability on Wednesday fielding questions about the golf “super league” that’s scheduled to begin play in 2022. He’s chairman of the Players Advisory Council. He’s a husband and father to a seven-month-old daughter. McIlroy is no longer the kid he was in 2010. Part of it has to do with what’s happened off the course. When the PGA Tour went on hiatus last March, he was No. He’s dropped to 15th in the world rankings, his lowest since 2009. In 2019, he led the tour in Total Strokes Gained this year, he’s 21st. Maybe it’s the absence of large galleries, the three-month pandemic layoff last year, or trying to keep up with DeChambeau, but McIlroy has appeared lost and unfocused on the golf course in 2021. I think I’ve neglected my strengths a little bit the past couple of months.” I guess trying to sort of focus on my strengths. I’ve worked a little bit on it, sort of just tried to understand what I do well. “I feel better about my game than I did flying home from Augusta on Friday night, put it that way. I feel like I’m on a pretty good trajectory at the minute,” he said on Wednesday at his pre-tournament press conference.
It’s all stuff that I’ve worked on before, but maybe just gotten away from a little bit by trying to focus on other things. Cowen’s job is to fix it, and, so far at least, McIlroy believes he’s on the right track. He tried to chase distance to catch up, and it ruined his swing. He admitted in March that seeing Bryson DeChambeau’s smashing drives got into his head.
McIlroy and Cowen have been working together back home in Florida since the Masters, trying to find what he does well again. He believes he’s found them in coach Pete Cowen. Rory McIlroy is ready to break out of his slump Last month, he took his seventh attempt to win the Masters and complete the career Grand Slam instead, he missed the cut and went searching for answers. He hasn’t won on the PGA Tour in 26 straight events dating back to the WGC-HSBC Champions in November 2019, his longest drought since he snapped a 27-event drought at the 2014 Open Championship. He’s currently trapped in one of the biggest slumps of his career. More than a decade after that breakthrough win, McIlroy is back in Charlotte after turning 32 on Tuesday and looking to recapture the magic he had those weeks. He also lost in a playoff to Rickie Fowler here in 2012. His red-hot final round remained the course record for five years until he broke it in 2015 with a 61 on Saturday on his way to a tournament-record 21-under finish and a seven-shot victory. He was still two days short of his 21st birthday and already a champion on the PGA Tour. In 2010, a fresh-faced, curly-haired McIlroy made the cut on the number before a spectacular 10-under 62 in the final round found him four shots clear of the field on Sunday. Rory McIlroy is in the field this week at Quail Hollow for the Wells Fargo Championship, a tournament where he can’t help but have happy memories.