McIlroy looking to “turn an okay season into a very good one”

Rory McIlroy has won three times in 2024 – twice on the PGA Tour and once on the DP World Tour – but even though majors are the currency on which a career like his trades, he still feels that there is enough time for him to transform what’s been an otherwise average year his standards.

“I certainly don’t want to sit up here and belittle my achievements at all this year and what I’ve done, but at the same time, yeah, I expect a certain standard from myself,” he told the press in Memphis where he is preparing for the first of the PGA Tour’s three-event FedEx Cup playoff series.

“Yeah, I’ve won a couple of times. I’ve had an opportunity to win a few more times than that and haven’t been able to get over the line. So I would have liked to have added a couple more to that win column.

“But as I said, there’s still three tournaments left in this PGA TOUR season. I think I’ve actually got eight or nine tournaments left this year, but three on the PGA TOUR, to turn an okay season into a very good one.

“I feel maybe a little similar to — even the three years that I’ve won the FedExCup, 2016 I came into the Playoffs I think in 36th and was able to win, but then ’19 and ’22 I was a little further up and a little closer to the lead.

“I think when the bulk of the season has come and gone and you’ve got this opportunity of three weeks to really, I guess, flip the script a little bit or change the narrative and what that season means, I think that’s a motivating factor, and part of the reason that I’ve probably played well in the Playoffs for the last three years.”

The world number three is making his PGA Tour return after representing Ireland in the Olympic Games in Paris, and though he put himself firmly in the mix for a medal – even Gold – on the back nine on Sunday, only to come up short thanks to finding the water on 15 at Le Golf National, it’s still a week that he’ll look back on fondly.

“Amazing,” was his response when asked to sum up the experience. “I played Tokyo with COVID and no one there and everything, so it was a different experience. But we played the practice rounds at the start of the week in France with no spectators just because they didn’t sell tickets for the practice rounds, and then you show up on Thursday and there’s 30,000 people at the golf course. It was very cool.