Time is a great healer, they say.
Rory McIlroy hopes so, even if it is only three weeks since Augusta National inflicted yet more mental scarring.
The Northern Irishman – who missed the cut at the Masters and then skipped the RBC Heritage the following week – returns to tour duty in the Wells Fargo at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, North Carolina, with a renewed vigour after his mini-break.
“It sucked. It sucked,” admitted McIlroy of his poor play and missed cut at the Masters, revealing he didn’t touch a club for two weeks afterwards and, instead, prioritised some family time which included an anniversary trip to New York with his wife Erica.
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McIlroy had gone into the Masters, and his latest attempt to complete the career Grand Slam, playing brilliantly in practice. Yet, he fell into the trap of believing it would be his week.
“I shouldn’t be thinking about if I’m going to be having a good week or a bad week. I should only be thinking about that first tee shot on Thursday. That’s getting ahead of myself and feeling really good about my game but having those thoughts of, ‘jeez, I’m going to have the best week I’ve ever had at Augusta’ isn’t the right mindset going into it,” he said.
“You need to be thinking about staying in the present. I feel like at Augusta I didn’t do a good job of that because of how well I was playing. I was almost too – not overconfident – but maybe got ahead of myself.”
McIlroy, the headline act at Quail Hollow in the absence of Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler, the only two players ahead of him in the world rankings, is set to take a financial hit – estimated to be as much as $3 million for missing the Heritage, a designated event on the PGA Tour – but claimed, “it was an easy decision . . . I felt like that fine or whatever is to happen was worth that for me in order to get some things in place”.
He added of his Masters showing and subsequent time out for himself: “It’s not the performance I obviously thought I was going to put up, nor was it the performance I wanted. Just incredibly disappointing. But I needed some time to regroup, and focus on what’s ahead.
“I think the last 12 months with everything that’s went on, it’s been a big 12 months. I don’t know [if] I fully, like, sat down to really reflect on stuff. I never had a chance to think about the Open at St Andrews [where he was 54-hole leader but ultimately finished two back of champion Cameron Smith] and everything that went on there.
“It was nice to have three weeks to just put all that stuff in the rear-view mirror and focus on what’s ahead. Three more Majors [the PGA, US Open and the British Open]. The entire golf season still to play. It was a good three weeks to sort of do all that and get refreshed and get ready for the next few months.”
McIlroy, a three-time winner at Quail Hollow, has changed putters again for this week’s tournament and ahead of the US PGA Championship at Oak Hill in New York in a fortnight’s time. The Scotty Cameron Newport GSS which he used at Augusta has been ditched and he has put his TaylorMade Spider X back into the bag.
