Rory McIlroy can finish a season as the European tour’s top player for the sixth time with a win at the Abu Dhabi Championship this week.
He’ll attempt to do so with a new swing.
The No. 3-ranked McIlroy said he has been hunkered down in a studio— first in Florida, then in New York — for three weeks, just hitting balls at a screen with a modified swing and not even looking at the flight of his shots.
He hasn’t liked the shape of his swing for a while, he said on Wednesday, and wanted a more robust one that could hold up in the most pressure-filled moments following a number of missed chances this season. The most notable was at the US Open in June, where he missed two putts in the 3-foot range in the final three holes on Sunday to pave the way for a victory for Bryson DeChambeau and extend McIlroy’s decade without a major title.
“The only way I was going to make a change, or at least move in the right direction, with my swing was to lock myself in a studio and not see the ball flight for a bit and just focus entirely on the movement,” McIlroy said.
“It’s something, he added, “just to make my golf swing more efficient, and then if it is more efficient, then it means it’s not going to break down as much under pressure. If I look at my year, the one thing that I would criticize myself on is the fact that I’ve had these chances to win.”
McIlroy has won twice this year — at the Dubai Desert Classic and the Wells Fargo Championship — and has had four second-place finishes, including recently at the Irish Open and the BMW PGA Championship on the European tour.
That has left the Northern Irishman frustrated but well clear in the Race to Dubai rankings that determine the best player of the year on the European tour. A win in Abu Dhabi can seal the title and remove some suspense — at least for McIlroy — from the final event of the season, at the DP World Tour Championship at the Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai next week.
“If I go out and win this week, obviously you know, it makes it a bit boring next week,” the four-time major champion said. “But I won’t find it boring. It will be lovely.”
A sixth Race to Dubai title — it used to be called the Order of Merit — would put McIlroy level with the late Seve Ballesteros on the all-time list and only two behind Colin Montgomerie, who has a record eight.
“I’m a European player,” McIlroy said. “I would like to go down as the most successful European of all time. Obviously Race to Dubai wins would count to that but also major championships and hopefully I’ve got a few more Ryder Cups ahead of me as well.
“So that’s something that I would like to (do). I think (it) is a goal that’s quite attainable over the next 10 years.”
Some of the world’s best golfers will be battling it out at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship beginning at the Yas Links on Thursday as the DP World Tour reaches a thrilling climax in the UAE.
The Abu Dhabi tournament is the fourth Rolex Series event of the season with a new position on the Tour’s global schedule as part of the season-ending DP World Tour Play-Offs.
Among the best players in the world competing are Major champions McIlroy and Rose, plus a host of Ryder Cup stars including Olympic silver medallist Tommy Fleetwood and Rolex Series winner Robert MacIntyre.
Fleetwood arrives at Yas Links on the back of a four-week break, during which time he has added a new TaylorMade putter to his bag.
Fleetwood also took advice from Ken Brown and David Howell as part of his preparations for a tournament he won in 2017 and 2018.
“I have enjoyed practise and everything, and just getting -- it’s funny, really. I think four weeks in golfers’ terms without a tournament feels like a year,” Fleetwood said.
“But it’s nice to be back and getting into the rhythm of preparing for a tournament, and beautiful place, great weather, so looking forward to it.
“It is a new putter. It is a new TaylorMade putter that I’ve been working with at home.
“The guys at TaylorMade, they have done an amazing job like we spoke about, designing something like a little bit different.”
Agencies