Scheffler-esque McIlroy can keep hype train from going off rails

Ronan MacNamara
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Rory McIlroy (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

Ronan MacNamara

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The Rory McIlroy hype train, calling at: Augusta National, Quail Hollow, Oakmont and Royal Portrush. Major championship silverware is permitted on board.

Waiting for Rory McIlroy to win his fifth major title has felt like waiting for a train station to be built in Navan, there comes a point where you begin to wonder if it will ever happen.

The Masters is just 62 days away, and like the DART, I was anticipating boarding it in more hope than expectation. Following McIlroy in the major championships has felt like buying a one way ticket to heartbreak but after Sunday night at Pebble Beach, this feels different.

This could be the year…

The Masters may still be a stretch, a green jacket seems easier to attain with one of the other three majors tucked away to end this now eleven-year drought.

But Sunday showed that if McIlroy produces his A-game he is still the best in the world. That includes Scottie Scheffler whose book McIlroy has taken a leaf from.

McIlroy wins major championships playing the golf he played on Sunday and discipline is the key.

The Holywood man is no stranger to looking left or right at his peers and while chasing Bryson DeChambeau’s speed was to his detriment, taking notes on Scheffler’s mental game and strategy could be the key factor in getting this major train to its destination.

“I think when one of your peers has the year like he had last year, and honestly the year like he had in ’23 as well, you start to take notice at what is he doing and what has made him or helped him separate himself from the rest of the fields,” McIlroy said after winning the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on Sunday.

On Friday, McIlroy looked in cruise control at Pebble Beach but four bogeys in eight holes on his back nine indicated that the same old faults in his game would prevent him from winning the big titles.

One bogey in his final 36 holes over the weekend put paid to such notions and a clinical display of front running helped him hold off the chasing pack. The 35-year-old was disciplined and controlled but when the opportunity came to hit the turbo button, he did just that on the par-5 14th as a 7-iron from 201 yards set up a 25-foot eagle as he stood on the throats of his opponents.

McIlroy can hit iron shots that nobody else can, but it’s about channeling that aggression and using it in the right way and at the right time. Sunday was a prime example of that. While he was guilty of letting others in at the US Open, Wentworth and the Irish Open, he never gave the field any encouragement at Pebble.

It was a change in mentality from McIlroy who played the golf that Scheffler would play and sicken his opponents and TV viewers alike.

“It’s the strategy, and I think every time that — I’m a big admirer of Scottie’s for a lot of different reasons, but every time I play with him and I watch how he plays and how disciplined he is, it’s a really cool thing to watch. And I’ve alluded to it this week, but honestly, just trying to take a little bit of a leaf out of his book.

“To me, that’s those are the two big things that he does better than anyone else. It takes a certain mindset to do that, too. He’s not — you know, there’s impulses that I have on the golf course that it looks like Scottie doesn’t have and I have to — I have to rein those in and I have to try to be a little more disciplined about it and that’s what I’m trying to do.”

An iron off the tee on the 72nd hole on Sunday, one wonders what might have been had he done that at Pinehurst.

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