When a fresh-faced, bushy-haired Rory McIlroy burst onto the scene back in 2009, making waves in the world of golf as he won four major championships over the course of the next five years, few would have expected that we would head into 2022 wondering if this will be the year that the Northern Irishman ends his lengthy seven-year wait for that elusive fifth major title.
It’s not for the want of trying though — McIlroy has recorded 12 top 10 finishes in the four big tournaments since that second PGA Championship victory at Valhalla in August 2014. That was actually the first time the now 32-year-old won two majors in a single calendar year, as he lifted The Open at Royal Liverpool just one month prior — making it even harder to believe that he has gone on this obscure, never-ending drought.
The 2021 season was arguably McIlroy’s toughest year yet of his major-winning dry-spell. Accustomed to finishing in the top 10 in the big four, the Northern Irishman started the year by missing the cut in the Masters for the first time since 2010, just about breaking into the top 50 in the PGA (T49) and The Open (T46), with a T7 in the US Open sparing his blushes somewhat.
Cut from The Players, the next best thing to a major, on the defence of his 2019 title as the 2020 edition was cancelled was another bitter pill to swallow. The world of golf was still coming to grips with the sheer speed and power of Bryson DeChambeau when the TPC Sawgrass-based tournament rolled around in March, and McIlroy admitted he got caught up in it all — ultimately missing the cut as he tried to tinker with his game.
Despite all this, Rory is still amongst the favourites in the online sports betting when major championships roll around. The bookmakers aren’t willing to take the risk of pushing McIlroy’s odds out further and there is good reason to believe that 2022 could be the year that the Northern Irishman finally gets his hands on that elusive fifth title and that almighty weight is lifted off his shoulders.
Judging by his season-opening press conference, McIlroy has taken the off-season to really asses his game and analyse what needs to be improved or tweaked slightly to get him further up the leaderboards and perhaps even into winning positions. It certainly isn’t a case of heading into the season having set shallow goals like winning a major or the FedEx Cup and so on.
Instead, McIlroy, who is currently ranked eighth in the world, has set himself much deeper objectives, like hitting 60% of fairways — a feat he last achieved in 2019 (62%) when he was named the PGA Tour Player of the Year — improving his iron play to gain a half-shot on the field, and better his putting. These are all good goals to have and will put him in good stead to compete for tournaments if he can achieve them, as we saw at the Dubai Desert Classic as he finished third.
“I think having goals that are more objective and more that I’m in control of – I can’t control if I win five or six times a year, because there’s so many other variables in there,” the Northern Irishman said. “But I can certainly control if I hit 60% of the fairways. I can control my strokes-gained numbers, that my stats are better than they were the year before.
“So, it’s about trying to set yourself goals that you can control, that are objective and measurable. And I guess those are the sort of goals I’ve started to set myself the last few years.”
McIlroy has been very open, perhaps more so than many other of the top golfers in the world would be, about his gameplan this year. He makes it sound very convincing, but if he truly wants to get that major win this year then, ultimately, he needs to achieve those goals.
While he played well in Dubai, his late meltdown was a glimpse that the old Rory is still in there and ready to come out at the worst times. But it might not be a bad thing he got it out of the way at that tournament and not a major so he can learn from his mistakes. He still seems confident and believes he can improve massively this year, so we believe in him.