Anybody watching Rory McIlroy of late would need to be fairly blind not to realise that the world number two continues to drive the ball like a dream, but that his troubles have come when he’s been taking aim at the green.
In each of his four PGA Tour tournament starts in 2024, he’s been among the leaders in Strokes-Gained-Off-The-Tee, and leads that category for the season thus far, and while he continues to have hot and cold weeks with the putter, it’s on Strokes-Gained-Approach that he lags well behind the lofty standards he’s set in his near 15 years on golf’s premier tour.
“Yeah, I have this amazing feeling with my woods at the minute,” he admitted in a press huddle before going out to play a practice round at TPC Sawgrass. “I know you saw a couple of tee shots yesterday. But when I try to recreate that feeling with the irons, it starts left and goes further left.
“I think it’s to do with you turn harder with a wood and you’re sort of clearing harder, and then I think sometimes — it’s really, it’ a feeling at the top in transition, and when I try to do it with an iron instead of a wood, I think it just sort of drops behind me. I love this feeling of firing my right arm down the target line, and I can do that with my woods really well, but then when I try to do that with my irons, the club face closes over and goes left. It’s almost like two different swings.
“I have a swing thought for my woods and I need a different swing thought for my irons, and that’s what I’ve been working on over the last couple days.”
The Pete Dye designed Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass is a notoriously bad place to be arriving with zero confidence with an iron in hand, but despite a love-hate relationship with the place, he is a past tournament winner having leapfrogged Jon Rahm on the final day. The iconic 17th hole with it’s island green is a hole that he’s changed his tune on in the past 15 years as well.
“I think when I first came here as a 20-year old, it was like, well, it’s only 140 yards, you should be able to hit something in close there and make birdie more times than not,” he said, “but I think you realize over time that taking the prudent approach and hitting it into the middle of the green, again, as I said, having 20 or 25 feet every time is probably the right play.
“I think it’s very memorable. I think because of where it comes in the — it’s the penultimate hole, and I think it’s an iconic hole. People think about this championship and this golf course, they automatically think about the 17th here and the island green. It has, it’s become one of the most iconic holes in golf because of that.
“Yeah, you’re standing there tied for the lead or you have a one-shot lead on Sunday, you’ve got to stand up and make a good swing and try to get it over and done with. It’s right up there.”
Perhaps unwittingly, McIlroy’s suggestion that Scottie Scheffler return to using a mallet putter when joining the CBS commentary team during the final round at the Genesis Invitational may have struck a chord with the world number one, who put a mallet putter back in his bag and wielded it to great effect at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill last weekend.
“I’m not going to give him any more advice, that’s for sure,” he said with a smile when it was brought up. “I was asked the question, and I basically gave a response that – it’s very hard to talk about other players. Scottie has had enough criticism about his putting and he doesn’t need me to [pile on] — you guys talk about it enough.
“It was me basically trying to talk about myself more than talk about Scottie. It was like, okay, when I putted with a blade, I struggled. When I went to the Spider, I found a little more success and I was a little more consistent. I didn’t know he was going to put it straight in the bag and win by five.
“If people ask for advice, I’ll certainly give them — I don’t feel like I need to be guarded or — I think over the years, coming up through the ranks, people have been good enough to me if I’ve asked them for advice to give me advice, so I think I should be able to repay that to other people if they come to me.”
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