THE runway to The Masters is growing ever shorter and with each passing week the questions are getting louder and more perplexing around the form of Rory McIlroy.
If there was any progress to report from his trip to The Players Championship, it is that he was able to sign off with a tie for 19th. Given his previous four starts yielded positions of 21, 21, 24 and 66, that will have to do for now if he is minded to search the bottom of his bag for optimism.
The tale of his closing loop of 72 was fitting for a week in which his only point of consistency was an ability to follow multiple moments of promise with sustained bursts of errors.
One statistic demonstrated the wildness of his undulations better than any other – across the four rounds he carded 26 birdies, which was the second most in field. And yet he accompanied them with so many mistakes that, at the time of writing, his nine-under-par total was a full 11 strokes behind the leader, defending champion Scottie Scheffler, who was leading Xander Schauffele down the stretch.
In a nutshell, that has often been the McIlroy conundrum – few players have his capacity to damage a course with great play, but too many others are better able to limit the amount that is self-inflicted.
Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland reacts to a missed putt on the first hole on Sunday
McIlroy hits from the pine straw on the first in the final round of The Players Championship
Across the four rounds, McIlroy carded 26 birdies, which was the second most in field
The jarring part is that he opened this tournament in brilliant fashion – his first-round 65 was exceptional. But come the end, his driving was wayward (only 50 per cent of fairways hit all week) and his approaches were too ragged for a sustained assault. Better than last week at Bay Hill; a long way beneath his best.
With all that in mind, the very last hole of his 72 was maybe the most appropriate way for it to end, with a drive into the water and a missed par putt from 12 feet.
His sigh told its own story at the conclusion of a round in which his five birdies were squarely balanced by five lost shots. ‘I think after the first round my expectations went sky high because I was like, ‘Oh, I think I’ve figured it out’,’ he said. ‘Then the last three days were a little bit more of a struggle. But I think I’m headed in the right direction. I’ve definitely straightened out a few of the iron shots, which was a big key for me coming into this week. I made enough birdies, it’s just a matter of getting rid of the bad stuff.’
McIlroy will have two weeks off before returning to play in San Antonio immediately before The Masters in the second week of April. Between now and then, he will be a fascinated onlooker on the outside when the six player directors of the PGA Tour meet with the Saudi backers of the LIV circuit for the first time on Monday.
The six – Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth, Cantlay, Adam Scott, Webb Simpson and Peter Malnati – will hold talks with the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund chief Yasir Al-Rumayyan in an effort to kick-start the slow-moving merger discussions.
Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland plays a shot from a bunker on the eighth hole on Sunday
McIlroy, once so central to that effort until he resigned from the policy board last year, said: ‘I think it should have happened months ago, so I am glad that it’s happening. Hopefully that progresses conversations and gets us closer to a solution.
‘I’ve said this before, I have spent time with Yasir. The people that have represented him in LIV I think have done him a disservice, so Greg Norman and those guys. I see the two entities, and I think there’s a big disconnect between PIF and LIV. I think you got PIF over here and LIV are sort of over here doing their own thing. So the closer that we can get to Yasir, PIF and hopefully finalize that investment, I think that will be a really good thing.
‘I think there’s a way to incorporate team golf and they want to see team golf survive in some way in the calendar. I don’t think it has to necessarily look like LIV.
‘I think in my mind you should leave the individual golf and then you play your team golf on the periphery of that. But, again, it’s going to require patience. People have contracts at LIV up until 2028, 2029. I don’t know if they’re going to see that all the way out, but I definitely see LIV playing in its current form for the next couple years anyway while everything gets figured out.
‘I don’t think this is an overnight solution, but if we can get the investment in, then at least we can start working towards a compromise.’
