The 2025 main championship season units up undeniably nicely for Rory McIlroy.
The PGA Championship might be at Quail Hole in Charlotte, the place McIlroy has received the Wells Fargo Championship no fewer than 4 occasions. The Open Championship will return to Royal Portrush in his native Northern Eire, the place he as soon as broke the course file by taking pictures a 61 at age 16.
However there’s one main that McIlroy clearly pines for above all. The one one lacking from his résumé — the one that will full the sixth profession Grand Slam in fashionable historical past.
McIlroy arrives at Augusta Nationwide in such optimum type that we’ve got to surprise — if 2025 isn’t the yr he captures the Masters, is it ever going to occur?
To not sound alarmist about one of many biggest golfers of this millennium, however McIlroy has already seen loads of possibilities to nab his inexperienced jacket come and go. He turns 36 subsequent month, and whereas he doesn’t have the harm historical past of Tiger Woods, it’s not affordable to count on him to play this nicely endlessly.
McIlroy enters this week atop the FedEx Cup standings due to victories on the AT&T Pebble Seaside Professional-Am and the Gamers Championship, the place he beat two extremely robust fields. Nobody on tour is gaining extra strokes per spherical than him — McIlroy’s placing it nicely and, as common, striping the whole lot off the tee.
His second-place end in 2022 and T-22 final yr got here within the shadow of champion Scottie Scheffler, who’s been a Tiger-esque dominant pressure in golf the previous few years however has lastly slowed down only a bit. Scheffler has but to win a event in 2025, ostensibly leaving the door ever so barely ajar for his chief competitors.
However we’ve achieved this dance earlier than: “Look out everybody, it’s Rory’s time!” His main championship drought has reached a full 10 seasons and counting, with a mesmerizing 21 top-10 finishes in majors since his final breakthrough — sufficient close to misses to show somebody mad.
Whether or not he wins this week is solely as much as McIlroy and what’s between his ears. I do know if I blew possibilities to win back-to-back U.S. Opens — falling to Wyndham Clark after which Bryson DeChambeau — my pores and skin would begin crawling once I reached the largest stage in golf.
McIlroy’s psychological toughness is on the middle of his plans for the week.
“It’s simply narratives. It’s noise,” he stated Tuesday. “It’s simply attempting to dam out that noise as a lot as attainable. I must deal with this event like all the opposite tournaments that I play all year long.
“Look, I perceive the narrative and the noise, and there’s loads of anticipation and buildup coming into this event every yr, however I simply should maintain my head down and give attention to my job.”
When Sergio Garcia received the Masters for the primary time in 2017, he did so in his nineteenth begin — essentially the most tries of any golfer earlier than breaking via at Augusta. Thursday will mark McIlroy’s seventeenth profession begin.
I’m not saying he received’t win majors in his 40s — Woods and Jack Nicklaus did. However the Scheffler-led subsequent era is stronger than ever. “There’s all the time subsequent yr” will, sometime, not apply.
