Rory McIlroy returns to San Antonio to compete in the Valero Texas Open, a tournament in which he achieved second place in 2013. A return that has much to do with the new way he has organised his calendar, betting on series of consecutive weeks competing that have the backdrop of next week’s Masters of Augusta, the only major that resists him to achieve his coveted Grand Slam.
This Wednesday, in the press room of the TPC San Antonio, the Northern Irishman has spoken about this agenda, the state of his game, his recent visit to Butch Harmon, the changes that the Augusta National has undergone, which he visited these days, and even the harm in terms of the interest of fans in men’s professional golf is having the division between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, as television audiences show.
His return to Valero Texas: “It’s good to be back. It’s a good golf course, it’s tough, difficult and visually intimidating. If you start to fail from the tee you can get into trouble. Especially facing a week like next week, it’s good preparation. If I’ve realised anything in recent years, it’s definitely that I play my best golf in tournament series, so this week will probably be the first of a four-competition stretch. Although it is undeniable that my goal is to have a good preparation for the Masters here.”
How is he feeling his game this season? “I think my game has shown signs of life in all aspects. Some weeks the driver has been good, other weeks the irons… Now I try to put it all together. There were good feelings at the TPC, but I feel that I have worked hard the last two weeks and have made great strides, especially in details with which I was ‘struggling’. That’s why this is a great week to put it into practice”.
His recent visit to Butch Harmon: “I have visited him several times throughout my career. I met Butch when I was 14 years old, so we have always had a good relationship. If there is a guy to go to when I want a second opinion, it’s him. I think that after THE PLAYERS and in that Florida Swing I was fighting with my swing and some mistakes I was making with the irons. I was missing something and wanted to have a second pair of eyes to analyse it. The thing with Butch is that you go to spend time with him and in the end you always feel reinforced. He’s half coach half psychologist, in a way. It’s fun to go there, we spent four hours in Las Vegas and he gave me a couple of tips that resonated with me. It’s the same thing I’ve been trying to do with my coach, Michael, but he said it in a different way. It was a trip that was worth it and I feel that I’ve done a good job afterwards. This week is great to see how far that work has taken me”.
Poppy, his daughter, told him he didn’t have to go to golf lessons because he already knows how to play: “It’s a bit like the chicken or the egg thing, isn’t it? You can say all you want, but if you don’t have the technique to back it up, it will be hard to do it. I just needed to clean up a couple of things in my swing and everything gets easier afterwards. Not to overthink and have a good mindset. When I was leaving for the airport to go see Butch in Las Vegas… Poppy’s words of wisdom, in a way they ‘hit’ me, as if she was right”.
His calendar change for the Masters: “I think it has been good. The results have not been what I would have liked, but I have learned a lot about where my game is. If I hadn’t played so much in the last couple of months, maybe I wouldn’t have started to go down this path I’m on and would just be trying to clean up my technique a bit. I’m working on a couple of things slightly different from what I had worked on before. I think it was a good idea. There have been some not so big ‘struggles’, but looking back, if I can manage to play well from April to August, I’ll be happy”.
The correction that he believes golf needs: “Yes, it’s not everything, but if we look at PGA Tour television this year, it’s down 20% overall. That’s a fifth, it’s a lot. I would say that LIV’s figures are not good in terms of people tuning in either. I think the fight and everything that has happened in recent years is tiring people out and turning them away from men’s professional golf… and that’s not good for anyone. It will be interesting to see how the four Majors, or the three really, leaving Augusta aside, which lives in its own world, fare compared to other big tournaments because you can argue that if the numbers are better, with the best players in the world competing, there’s an argument to say ‘ok, we need to get this back together’. But if the numbers are not so good, we have another argument to keep saying that we need to get everyone playing again because people are losing interest so much that they don’t even tune into the majors. That’s what I meant by a correction being needed, I’m close to NBC and people care about these things and for those who watch golf on television, losing 20% in a year is quite surprising”.
His visit to Augusta and the change in the second tee: “I thought it was going to be visually different, they said it had moved back to the left and that you would have to hit it more… a ‘draw’ on the corner. But if they don’t tell you anything, you might think you’re in the same place, it doesn’t look very different. You can still hit a straight shot and keep it to the left of the bunker, the change is not as drastic as I expected. There are new greens on the 2nd, 4th and 6th”.
What is the best advice he has been given to play in Augusta? “Discipline, not to fall into the temptation to try to do too much, stick to the game plan. Ben Crenshaw told me something good a few years ago, he said ‘high lines, keep the lines high, read more putts than you think’. But yes, if someone tells you to make par for four days in Augusta, you would think it’s quite easy and while you try to achieve it, you probably do a couple of rounds of under 70 strokes. But if they tell you to go out and make 67, it’s easy to end up with 75 or 76 strokes because you start to be impatient, to fail in wrong places, to not play the disciplined golf you need… Good golf in Augusta can feel like boring golf, which is something I’ve always struggled with because it’s not my style of play. But for me it’s the biggest test of discipline and patience of the year”.
