OAKMONT, Pa. — Rory McIlroy has not looked like himself since he reached the pinnacle of the mountain he’d been trying to climb for nearly 15 years when he captured the Masters in April to complete the career Grand Slam he’d been chasing.
McIlroy tied for 47th at the PGA Championship last month, curiously refusing to speak to the media after all four rounds.
On Tuesday, McIlroy spoke of “trying to have a little bit of amnesia and forget about what happened six weeks ago’’ when re-setting his motivation and goals.
“I worked incredibly hard on my game from October last year all the way up until April this year (and) it was nice to sort of see the fruits of my labor come to fruition and have everything happen,’’ McIlroy said two days before the first round of the U.S. Open at Oakmont. “But at the same time, you have to enjoy that. You have to enjoy what you’ve just accomplished. I certainly feel like I’m still doing that and I will continue to do that.
“At some point, you have to realize that there’s a little bit more golf left to play this season — here, Portrush (the British Open), Ryder Cup — so those are obviously the three big things that I’m sort of looking at for the rest of the year. Weeks like Quail Hollow (the PGA) or even weeks like last week (Canada), it makes it easier to reset in some way, to be like, ‘OK, I sort of need to get my stuff together here and get back to the process and sort of what I’d been doing for that seven months from October last year until April this year.’’
McIlroy, the 2011 U.S. Open winner, missed the cut at the 2016 U.S. Open when it was last at Oakmont.
“I don’t really remember much about 2016,’’ he said. “I think I just tried to erase it from the memory bank.’’
That week, though, was the beginning of what became a line of demarcation for McIlroy’s performances in U.S. Opens.
He went on to miss the cut at the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills, which is a course McIlroy has not hidden his dislike for, and again in 2018 at Shinnecock Hills.
“I missed the cut at the U.S. Open in 2016, 2017 and 2018,’’ McIlroy said. “We were here (Oakmont) in ’16, Erin Hills in ’17, which is what it is, and then 2018 at Shinnecock. And I felt Shinnecock was a really hard one because I love that golf course, and to perform the way I did there, it really hurt me.
“Then I would go play Hartford (the Travelers) the next week and I’d feel really comfortable on a PGA Tour setup, and I think it was that week where it clicked. It was like, ‘Why am I so comfortable here in Hartford but last week I had no clue what to do?’
“So that’s when I made the decision at that back end of 2018 into 2019, I want to try to build my game around the toughest tests that we have in the game. Then as you’ve seen since 2019, six top 10s in a row at this tournament, obviously finished second the last two years in a row. And I’ve definitely become a much more confident US Open player and I’m way more comfortable on those firm, fast setups like you saw at Pinehurst last year and LACC the year before that.
“The U.S. Open went from probably my least favorite major to probably my favorite because of what it asks from you, and I love that challenge.’’