Rory McIlroy enjoyed his Masters victory in April. Still enjoying it, actually.
That can be a good thing. He had been trying to win the damn thing for nearly two decades, after all, so no fault in stopping to smell the flowers.
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But the day job never stops, and when you’re trying to win golf tournaments — trying to beat the likes of Scottie Scheffler, who’s still chasing his own career grand slam — there’s going to be a professional cost. That cost showed up in May at the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow, when McIlroy finished T47, and last week at the Canadian Open, when he missed the cut altogether.
Turns out, even when you’re Rory McIlroy — one of only six players to win all four majors in the history of the sport — you still need to put in the practice.
“I worked incredibly hard on my game from October last year all the way up until April this year,” McIlroy explained Tuesday. “It was nice to sort of see the fruits of my labor come to fruition and have everything happen.
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“You have to enjoy that. You have to enjoy what you’ve just accomplished. I certainly feel like I’m still doing that and I will continue to do that. At some point, you have to realize that there’s a little bit more golf left to play this season. … Weeks like Quail Hollow or even weeks like last week, it makes it easier to reset in some way, to be like, okay, I sort of need to get my stuff together here and get back to the process.”
That process will continue Thursday morning at Oakmont Country Club, where McIlroy will try to avenge the brutal defeat at last year’s U.S. Open at the hands of Bryson DeChambeau. If you don’t remember the two short putts he missed in the closing holes that would have won him that tournament, he does. Had he not won at Augusta in April, that would have been the storyline heading into this tournament. He would have been asked about it a dozen different times in a dozen different ways. But he wasn’t asked about it once on Tuesday. Funny how a Masters victory can reshape an entire narrative.
Rory McIlroy signs autographs after his practice round prior to the 125th U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club. (David Cannon/Getty Images)
(David Cannon via Getty Images)
Instead, he talked about spending more time on his hobbies — he and caddie Harry Diamond played a lot of tennis last weekend — and taking trips with his daughter — “Giving Poppy that opportunity to see the world at such a young age I think is a wonderful opportunity for her” — and just having fun, the kind of fun one allows themselves when a certain weight has been lifted.
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“Just trying to do things that I enjoy and get back to having hobbies and filling my time with the things that I want to do,” he explained.
But now, fun’s over, and it’s back to the grind — a grueling, 6-inch-thick, rough-infested slog in the form of Oakmont where, lucky for him, he’ll tee it up Thursday morning with fellow Irishman and good buddy Shane Lowry for the first two rounds.
“I think chasing a certain goal for the better part of a decade and a half, I think I’m allowed a little bit of time to relax a little bit,” he said. “But here at Oakmont, I certainly can’t relax this week.”
