Time to tick a few more boxes. With the FedEx Cup/Tour Championship wrapped up with millions of greenbacks, Rory McIlroy returns to Europe for the autumn run-in to the DP World Tour season with the opportunity to clock up another win or two or three but also with the chance to close in on Scottie Scheffler’s number one position in the official world rankings.
A victory in this week’s BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, which belatedly starts the European Ruder Cup qualifying for next year’s match, would elevate McIlroy above Cameron Smith to world number two and another win in next week’s Italian Open in Rome would potentially move him to number one. That’s how close he is.
McIlroy – back at Wentworth for the first time since 2019 – is the headline act with strong back-up from US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick and Jon Rahm in a field that contrasts sharply with the run-in to the PGA Tour in that it will feature those LIV Golf players who are card-carrying European Tour players.
Whilst the PGA Tour stateside blocked the breakaway players from competing and has extended its ban on players who defected in informing them that their tour cards for the 2022/’23 “will not be renewed,” a different legal view is at play on this side of the Atlantic which has allowed for 18 LIV players to tee up at Wentworth, among them Graeme McDowell. (For the record, G-Mac got a $138,000 payday for his 39th place finish in the LIV event in Boston on Sunday).
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In the aftermath of his Tour Championship win in East Lake, McIlroy spoke of how the very thought of lining up beside LIV players at Wentworth would be “hard to stomach” and, since then, the European Tour has sought to marginalise those players by asking them not to wear any LIV branded clothing while also not requiring them for Wednesday’s celebrity pro-am and planning also to put them in non-marquee groups.
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McIlroy, who currently heads the Race to Dubai order of merit, has planned a European swing for September which will also see him play in next week’s Italian Open and the Dunhill Links in Scotland at the end of the month, all with the view of consolidating his lead at the top of the standings before the end-of-season finale in Dubai in November.
With two wins so far this year, in the Canadian Open and the Tour Championship (he also won the CJ Cup last October in the early stage of the PGA Tour’s calendar wraparound season), McIlroy enjoyed one of the best statistical campaigns of his career. His scoring average on the PGA Tour was 68.67 (the only player to finish with a sub-69 average, the overall average being 71.09) and only two other players have matched McIlroy’s average (Vijay Singh in 2003, and Tiger Woods on eight occasions).
McIlroy’s impressive season on the PGA Tour was built on a post-Augusta surge in form. According to PGA Tour statisticians, after ending The Masters ranked next-to-last among 209 PGA Tour players in average proximity from 50 to 125 yards (24 feet, 1 inch), McIlroy went on a tear that saw him close out the season with an average of 14 feet, 1 inch, best among all players with more than 30 attempts in that span.
And that wasn’t the only area where he upped his play this year. McIlroy ranked number 131 in scrambling percentage last season, only to finish 30th this year, while also improving more than 50 spots in strokes gained: around the green (63rd in 2020-21 to 12th this season). Perhaps most importantly, the 22-time PGA TOUR winner finished number 16 on tour in strokes gained: putting per round, after he finished 66th in 2021 and 122nd in 2019-20.
McIlroy ended the season ranked inside the top-50 in all four primary strokes gained categories (off-the-tee, approach the green, around the green and putting), only the second time he’s done that, joining the 2018-19 season. That season he also won the Tour Championship and RBC Canadian Open, along with The Players.
“This year feels very similar to the way I played in 2019,” he said. “It’s a carbon copy in terms of the consistency and the numbers and the strokes gained numbers, but my finishes in the majors have been better and that’s been a real positive looking ahead into next year and the future.”
The immediate future is the BMW PGA at Wentworth, where he’ll be hoping to claim a second win in the event (having won in 2014) and also, you suspect, to get one over those LIV boys.
