Rory McIlroy's schedule changes suggest a major change

Rory McIlroy is making some changes.

Some are in his swing. Others are in his plans. And some have very large pictures. But if you put together his comments this week and read a little between the lines? It is easy to make these two conclusions about the World No. 3:

1. McIlroy doubles himself.

2. He's done doing the PGA Tour a favor.

Why is one of those interesting? Mainly because they are different. They tell us something about McIlroy, golf's greatest star. They tell us something about professional golf, too. Here's why:

MJIKONGA

McIlroy showed up in the United Arab Emirates at this week's Abu Dhabi HSBC tournament with a brand new golf swing. It's the same golfer, of course, but McIlroy says this is his most significant change over time.

“Yeah, maybe I haven't liked my golf swing for a long time, especially the backswing,” McIlroy said before the tournament. That may seem like an incredible statement from any top golfer, never mind the owner of the world's most watched golf course – but we actually hear top golfers talk this way. Imagine Viktor Hovland reworking his swing after winning the FedEx Cup or Tiger Woods reworking his swing after winning a bunch of majors. Swing changes may be cautionary tales, but playing is part of the job, and McIlroy's first-round 5-under 67 suggested the changes will come sooner rather than later.

The only reason McIlroy hasn't made changes earlier now? He didn't have time. But three weeks after Dunhill Links, his latest event, McIlroy said he locked himself in the swing studio and hit balls on a blank screen, focusing only on body movements. He learned his swing mechanics from a live TV feed but completely ignored the flight of the ball to avoid real-time reactions and corrections. It felt like a mental refresher, too.

“I think those three weeks were important. I didn't have time to do that 18 months ago,” he said.

Specifically, McIlroy said, the changes were made to “clean up” certain imperfections in his swing, which made him rely more on “timing and matching my swings and a bunch of different technical things.” After another year full of close calls, he's too busy making his game bulletproof in golf's most high-pressure moments.

“When I look at my year, the thing I criticize myself for is that I got these opportunities to win,” he said. While he walked away with the Dubai Desert Classic in January, the Zurich Classic in April and the Wells Fargo Championship in May, he had several near misses, including a painful finish at the US Open and back-to-back second-place showings at the Irish Open and Wentworth this fall . His highest miss was two short putts at Pinehurst, but McIlroy knows there have been times when iron shots have let him down.

“For me, it's just a matter of making my golf swing work well, and if it works well, then it won't go down too much under pressure,” he said. “When I got these chances to win, it's okay, some of them may have been caused by hitting the ball but some of it was my hitting the balls that made me lose an important point. I think I'm just trying to get all of that right so that whenever I'm under that pressure, you know, I can rely 100 percent on my swing and know what's going to happen.”

It's no secret that McIlroy wants the biggest tournament more than anything else in the world. Now we know the next thing he does is try to cross the line.

THE PROGRAM

In an interview with James Corrigan of Telegraph SportMcIlroy has let it slip that he plans to retire from his PGA Tour program next season. This is not surprising – by the end of the season, McIlroy had revealed that he was tired and had played too many events – but it is still surprising to see which events he plans to miss.

First, McIlroy almost never plays the Sentry, the Tour's season opener in Maui. He also doesn't plan to return to some of his concurrent tournaments in 2024, including the Cognizant Classic in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., the Valero Texas Open in San Antonio and the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head. The last two Masters tournaments, suggest that McIlroy will try a different strategy as he heads to Augusta National next season. (He's gotten into the habit of playing the week before the majors, but it sounds like that's about to change.)

Another change: If he plays up to his usual standards, McIlroy also suggested he might skip the inaugural FedEx Cup Playoffs, where he finished T68 (out of 70), in 2024.

“I probably won't play the first playoff event in Memphis,” he told the media The Telegraph. “I mean, I finished dead last this year and I'm only down one spot on the playoff list.”

Most people, including this writer, would understandably blow the gun on an early August trip to Memphis, which would seem like a more sensible spring tour stop than a hot summer. But it's worth noting that McIlroy's theoretical layoff will come the week of FedEx St. Jude Championship, the home game of the Tour's biggest sponsor.

This is also McIlroy rubbing off on the system he helped create. Two years ago he blew up the Signature Events as a way to strengthen the Tour and suggested that the top pros play all. By 2025, including playoffs and players, the Tour will have 12 Signature events – and it sounds like McIlroy plans to skip three of them.

Interestingly, there is at least one event he has added to his schedule (and we're not talking about TGL): the December premiere of “The Showdown” featuring McIlroy and World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler in a crossover match against Bryson DeChambeau of LIV Golf and Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka. , four individual players who use their freedom as their different leagues are no longer a problem.

It is a fun show and a simple one day event. But it also seems to be rather telling.

3. THE BIG PICTURE

Perhaps no golfer has had a more public or dramatic relationship with the changing landscape of the pro game than McIlroy. When LIV Golf started in 2022 he took on the unofficial mantle of PGA Tour spokesperson and battled Tiger Woods to keep the Tour's best players together. He was critical of some of those who left and the way LIV divided the game.

But when the Tour brass reached a preliminary agreement with LIV, that fight suddenly felt silly. McIlroy admitted he felt like a sacrificial lamb; that was the end of his tenure as an unofficial Tour spokesperson. As golf's increasingly dull battles continue, McIlroy — who left the Tourism Policy Board (and was barred from returning, though he's called to the commerce subcommittee, and I can hear you yawning here) — has pushed sides. finding a common ground, suggesting that joint visits are the only way to avoid irreparable damage to the game. McIlroy looked very friendly to both the PGA Tour's Jay Monahan and PIF chief Yasir Al-Rumayyan at Dunhill, a reminder of how the landscape has changed and he has changed with it.

This week in Abu Dhabi McIlroy shot down rumors that a PGA Tour-Saudi PIF deal had been struck and suggested there was still some way to go. “I was hearing about it for the first time,” he said, adding, “I think I would have heard if there had been”. Any deal requires approval from the Justice Department, and it won't happen overnight. But if the DOJ was able to strike a deal, as one reporter suggested…

“It would be a big moment,” McIlroy said.

McIlroy also trained his eye on Europe, as he usually does this time of year; he is hoping to get his sixth Order of Merit on the European circuit and the Race to Dubai will conclude next week.

“I am a European player. I would like to go down as one of the most successful Europeans of all time. “Obviously the Race to Dubai win can count towards that but also the big championships and hopefully I have a few more Ryder Cups ahead of me,” he said.

You also know that the DP World Tour is trying to find its place in this new world order. Like many of the other PGA Tour stars in this week's field – think Tommy Fleetwood, Shane Lowry, Adam Scott – McIlroy made parachutes when he could, but he still misses a large part of the DP World Tour season, arriving in the later playoffs PGA Tour tour stops in Ireland, England and Scotland before spending the year in the Middle East. In his beautiful world of golf the top circuit program will include some of the national openings that are the hallmarks of the DP World program.

“There should be tournaments scattered throughout the year so that the tour remains relevant, not just in a four-month window but a little bit longer than that,” McIlroy said. “Yeah, look, we'll see what happens. I think I mentioned that I think the European Tour is in a good place because they can have a few options going forward. “

McIlroy thinks his home tour has done well to keep his options open. He seems to put himself the same way.