PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA | Before many people had finished their first cup of coffee Thursday morning, Rory McIlroy already had made a mess of the Players Championship.
The third-ranked player in the world and grouped with No. 1 Jon Rahm and No. 2 Scottie Scheffler, McIlroy started the biggest event thus far in 2023 by making a choppy double bogey and, at least golf-wise, things didn’t get much better.
McIlroy missed the cut by three strokes after rounds of 76-73 – extended by a Friday rain delay that pushed him to Saturday morning before heading home – and it was just the third time in his last 33 official starts worldwide that he failed to make the cut.
One week after coming up one stroke short at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and having spent hours in meetings sorting through the PGA Tour’s dramatic restructuring amid the LIV Golf uprising, McIlroy perhaps faced an inevitable flat performance at TPC Sawgrass’ Stadium Course.
“I'd love to get back to being a golfer, yeah. Look, it's been a busy couple of weeks, and … honestly it's been a busy sort of six or eight months,” McIlroy said Saturday morning.
“But as I said at the start of the week, everything has sort of been announced now, and the wheels have been put in motion, so it should obviously quiet down from here.”
"As I said, I'm ready to get back to being purely a golfer.”
Rory McIlroy
McIlroy has been at the center of the storm engulfing the PGA Tour and its response/reaction to the LIV Golf threat. Though he was ranked No. 1 in the world last month, the balancing act tilted against his golf game at the Stadium Course, which exposed his scratchy ball-striking.
“The golf out here, that's fine, but it's just more the time at home to make sure you're getting prepared, to make sure that you're doing everything you can to be ready once you show up to these weeks,” McIlroy said. “That's where I've maybe sacrificed a little bit of time with some of this other stuff. As I said, I'm ready to get back to being purely a golfer.”
Nothing much worked at the Players Championship. McIlroy continues to struggle getting comfortable with a new driver and he hit just 13 of 28 fairways. His short game couldn’t save him as McIlroy ranked 125th in strokes gained putting the first two rounds.
That’s the ticket to a weekend off.
McIlroy, 33, a Northern Irishman who lives in Jupiter, Florida, has a trip to Augusta National planned with Ireland’s Shane Lowry early this week. With the start of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play next week, McIlroy remains focused on that elusive green jacket at the Masters next month to complete the career Grand Slam.
“From now all the way until the start of April,” McIlroy said, “it's really just all about getting ready for Augusta.”
Ron Green Jr.