Rory McIlroy’s schedule changes suggest bigger changes

Rory McIlroy is going through some changes.

Some are good for him. Some of them are on his schedule. And some have a more general picture. But if you piece together his comments this week and read a little between the lines? It’s easy to draw two conclusions about the third racket of the world:

1. McIlroy redoubles his efforts.

2. He’s done helping the PGA Tour.

Why are any of them interesting? Mainly because they are different. They tell us something about McIlroy, perhaps golf’s biggest star. They also tell us a thing or two about professional golf. Here’s why:

SWING

McIlroy arrived in the United Arab Emirates for the HSBC Abu Dhabi Championship this week with a new look and feel. golf swing. Of course, it comes from the same golfer, but McIlroy says it’s his biggest swing change in a while.

“Yeah, I probably didn’t like the shape of my golf swing for a while, especially the backswing,” McIlroy said before the tournament. This might seem like a remarkable statement from any top golfer, let alone the owner of one of the most enviable golf clubs on the planet – but in fact, we’re used to hearing top golfers say exactly that. Think Viktor Hovland retooling your swing after winning the FedEx Cup or after Tiger Woods updated his skills after winning several major tournaments. Drastic changes may be cautionary tales, but skill is part of the profession, and McIlroy suggested in the first round of under-67s that change would come sooner rather than later.

One of the reasons McIlroy didn’t make the change sooner? He didn’t find the time. But for three weeks after the Dunhill Links, his last event, McIlroy said he locked himself in a swing studio and hit balls at a blank screen, focusing only on his body movements. He studied the mechanics of the shot live, but completely ignored the flight of the ball to avoid real-time reactions and corrections. This also sounded like a mental reset.

“I think these three weeks have been important. I haven’t had time to do that in the last 18 months,” he said.

Specifically, McIlroy said, the changes are meant to “address” some flaws in his game that had him relying too heavily on “timing and coincidence in my transition and a bunch of different technical things.” After another year filled with danger, he is obsessed with making his game more reliable during golf’s most intense moments.

“If I look at my year, the only thing I would criticize myself for is the fact that I had a chance to win,” he said. While he won the Dubai Desert Classic in January, the Zurich Classic in April and the Wells Fargo Championship in May, he had several more misses, including a heartbreaking second-place finish at the US Open and a comeback to win. This autumn he again finished second at the Irish Open and Wentworth. His biggest misses were two short putts at Pinehurst, but McIlroy knows there have been times when iron putts have let him down, too.

“For me, it’s just a way to make my golf swing more efficient, and if it’s more efficient, it means it won’t break as much under pressure,” he said. “When I had those chances to win, okay, some of them might have been because of the putter, but others were because my ball-striking let me down as the deciding moment. I think I’m just trying to get this whole thing in order so that whenever I get under that kind of pressure, you know, I can trust my shots a hundred percent and know what’s going to happen.”

It’s no secret that McIlroy wants a major championship more than anything else. Now we know what he’ll do next as he tries to cross the line.

SCHEDULE

In an interview with James Corrigan from Telegraph SportMcIlroy let slip that he plans to abandon his PGA Tour schedule next season. It’s no shock: By the end of the season, McIlroy hinted that he’s exhausted and has played too many tournaments, but it’s still amazing to see what tournaments he plans to miss.

For starters, McIlroy almost never plays the Sentry, the Tour’s season opener in Maui. And he also has no plans to return to some of the one-off tournament starts he made in 2024, including the Cowlant Classic in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., the Valero Texas Open in San Antonio and the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head. The latter two are a Masters sandwich, suggesting McIlroy will try a different strategy when he heads to Augusta National next season. (He has gotten into the habit of playing the week before major tournaments, but it looks like that will change.)

Another change: If he plays up to his usual standards, McIlroy also suggested he could miss the first leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs, where he finished T68 (out of 70) in 2024.

“I probably won’t play in the first playoff event in Memphis,” he said. told Telegraph. “I mean, this year I finished basically dead last and only dropped one spot in the playoff standings.”

Many people, including this author, will realize that a boat trip to Memphis in early August might seem like a more logical tour stop in the spring rather than in the sweltering summer. But it’s notable that McIlroy’s theoretical delay will come the week of the FedEx St. Championship. Jude Championship, the home game of the Tour’s largest sponsor.

It’s also McIlroy shrugging at the system he helped create. Two years ago, he touted Signature Events as a way to strengthen the Tour and invited top pros to play them all. In 2025, including playoffs and the Players’ Tournament, the Tour will feature 12 marquee events – and it appears McIlroy plans to skip three of them.

Interestingly, he’s added at least one event to his schedule (and we’re not talking about TGL): the December debut of “Showdown” featuring McIlroy and world No. 1 Scotty Scheffler in a crossover match against LIV Golf’s Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, four individual players exercising their freedom even as their respective leagues remain deadlocked.

This is a fun exhibition and an easy one-day one-off event. But it also seems like a telling substitute.

3. BIG PICTURE

Perhaps no golfer has had a more public and more dramatic relationship with the changing landscape of the professional game than McIlroy. When LIV Golf launched in 2022, he took on the unofficial mantle of the PGA Tour and fought alongside Tiger Woods to keep the Tour’s top players together. He was openly critical of some of those who left and the way LIV divided the game.

But when Tour management reached a tentative agreement with LIV, the fight suddenly seemed stupid. McIlroy admitted he felt like a sacrificial lamb; this was the end of his tenure as an unofficial representative of the Tour. As golf’s increasingly boring wars drag on, McIlroy, who left the Tour’s Policy Council (and was barred from returning, although he was named to the deals subcommittee and I can hear you yawning from here), has begun to insist that for the parties to find common ground, suggesting that a single tour is the only way to avoid causing irreparable harm to the sport. McIlroy looked very friendly with both PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and PIF chief Yasser Al-Rumayyan at Dunhill, a reminder of how the landscape has changed and he has changed with it.

This week in Abu Dhabi, McIlroy denied rumors of an agreement between the PGA Tour and the Saudi PIF and suggested there was still work to be done. “This is the first I’ve heard of it,” he said, adding, “I think I would have heard of it if it existed.” After all, any deal requires Justice Department approval and won’t happen overnight. But if the Justice Department agrees to the deal, as one reporter suggested…

“It’s going to be a big moment,” McIlroy said.

McIlroy also kept a close eye on Europe, as he usually does at this time of year; he is hoping to earn his sixth European Order of Merit with the Race to Dubai wrapping up next week.

“I’m a European player. I would like to go down in history as the most successful European of all time. Obviously, Race for Dubai wins will count towards that, as well as major championships, and hopefully a few more Ryder Cups to come,” he said.

He also knows that the DP World Tour is also trying to find its place in this new world order. Like many of his fellow PGA Tour stars this week – think Tommy Fleetwood, Shane Lowry, Adam Scott – McIlroy is parachuting in when he can, but he still misses most of the DP World Tour season, coming into the post-PGA playoffs The tour for the autumn took place in Ireland, England and Scotland, and then finished the year in the Middle East. In his ideal golf world, the top tournament schedule would include some of the national tournaments that are hallmarks of the DP World schedule.

“For the tour to stay relevant, it needs to have multiple tournaments throughout the year, not just over a four-month period, but a little longer,” McIlroy said. “Yes, look, let’s see what happens. I think I’ve already articulated that I think the European Tour is in a good position because it could have a few different options in the future.”

McIlroy believes his home tour went well because it left room for choice. He seems to position himself the same way.

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