Rory McIlroy's 2024 season has not lived up to his expectations.
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ATLANTA, Ga. — Rory McIlroy was walking the ninth hole at East Lake Golf Club on Wednesday afternoon as he tried to find words to sum up his PGA Tour season. But after a while he stopped the words and made a sound instead, something like lolslowly released, like air from a balloon.
It was hot in Atlanta. It's hot it's hot. Ninety-four degrees and rising, the heat of the sun, the constant wind, all promote some illness. McIlroy in particular was in good spirits, enjoying a walk and a game with Shane Lowry, probably his closest friend on Tour. The course was empty in front of them – a field of 30 players does little to fill a practice tee sheet – so they progressed at their own pace, dropping the greens to hit more shots on the brand new surface. surface areas. For chasers, every shot counts this week; even for someone as rich as McIlroy, the $25 million first prize is an eye-catcher.
But the Tour Championship is also a reminder of your year, of what happened and what you want to happen, and for McIlroy the gap between those two things has been huge this year. So cool air.
“I feel like I played better golf than the results,” he continued. “I had a very good chance to win another important one. I think I had, I know, a few good wins and whatever, but…”
Here he retreated. Everything after the “big one” was unsatisfactory. It was everything anything else. This is the curse of McIlroy's success and his expectations and shortcomings. Every year now he feels great or worried, even this year, when he has the same number of world wins (three) than finishes outside the top 25.
It's not to say that this isn't the standard for most golfers, and it shouldn't be – few are satisfied with the Tour pros as it is. Lowry, for one, is excited about qualifying for the Tour Championship. “It's almost a shame I wasn't here,” he joked. “Be a pro for a long time or whatever.” But for McIlroy it is different. Because of his talent level. Because of his four majors, he won in quick succession. Because of the time that has passed since he won that fourth one. Because he has won everything else in the decade since then.
His dissatisfaction does not invalidate the victory. McIlroy enjoyed his Zurich Classic win with Lowry as his teammate. He enjoyed his next start, a statement victory at Quail Hollow, where he chased down Xander Schauffele on Sunday and played his best golf in recent memory. But Schauffele brought him back the next week at the PGA Championship, which counted more. That was the topic of the year.
“You know, you see that Scottie [Scheffler] and Xander [Schauffele] what I did this year — I'm third in the world rankings, but I feel like I'm third,” McIlroy said. Scheffler has six victories and Olympic gold in 2024. Schauffele picked up two majors and a top-five boatload. “You know, they had great years, and I look at my year compared to them and, I mean, it doesn't compare.”
It's been easy to see McIlroy on edge in recent weeks, frustrated by one too many thoughts and the exhaustion of late summer in, say, Memphis, Tenn. He played very badly when in the first round of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, he hit. almost none. Even at the BMW in Denver – a tournament he said he enjoyed the most – his frustration boiled over; he threw his stick into the water from one hole and leaned on it so hard that it broke from the other. It's hard to know the trauma of McIlroy's personal life playing in public this summer. But even sticking to the heartbreak on the course it's easy to trace this impatience directly back to the biggest frustration of the year, the last three holes at Pinehurst, where he let the US Open slip from his grasp.
McIlroy is not the only one here who is fighting fatigue and heading to the finish line. Scheffler had a short fuse in Denver, too. And even the stoic Schauffele spoke of the dangers of his “patience bucket” a little empty.
“Yeah, I feel like I'm getting over the edge faster, I'm getting frustrated faster,” Schauffele said. “You have to test yourself a lot whenever you try to compete.” It's easier said than done.
McIlroy admitted he's feeling down about the progress golf has made this season, too. It was two years ago this time that McIlroy led the revamped Tour. He found strength in being in that mix, in making a change, in fighting for its future. In recent months he has been called by the golf world federation, but that has not led to things being over the line; PIF-PGA Tour talks drag on, never end. It's easy to get discouraged by a lack of progress.
“Something like that, I think,” he said, asking for a shortened year in sports. “I thought there would be some progress made, which is sad. I think at this point, everybody just gets fed up with it, gets fed up with it. It's just a little cloud over golf. But the cloud is very niche, you know?
“I wish more had been done, but there doesn't seem to be much willingness on the part of some people to try to fix it.”
Do you still feel the need for things to come together? Earlier PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said that, although both sides are at the table, the Tour is also moving forward “at full speed” with its product. The implication was clear: We don't know the need this. But McIlroy believes the reunion brings a high ceiling.
“Yes. I mean, I was on the wrong end, but look at the numbers that Bryson and I did at Pinehurst,” he said, referring to the huge US Open TV ratings when the two battled it out. “That's what has to happen.
“[LIV] you have a lot of personality, you know. The PGA Tour, I mean, we're here trying to create the best product. You need villains.
“Otherwise it would be flat.”
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