Staying carefree Rory’s way of contending at Majors

With the US Open at Torrey Pines hours away from tee-off, excerpts from the interview with the 2011 champion Rory McIlroy:

Rory, just talk a little bit about your preparation this week and how the course is playing.

Rory: Yeah, it’s certainly different when we see it in January for the Farmers, but it’s really good. I had my first look at the course yesterday, played 18 holes. The setup’s great. It’s fair. Obviously, with the dry southern California climate, the greens have the possibility to get very firm, so I think they’ve taken that in mind.

The rough is playable. You can hit it in the rough and at least have a chance to get it up around the green and sort of use your short game to scramble and save par. It’s not as penal as some other U.S. Opens. But I think the setup’s good. It’s really fair. I’ve heard nothing but positive praise from a lot of the players.

It’s nice to come to a venue where we all know it pretty well from sort of being on the PGA Tour schedule. There’s not really any secrets out there. We all know what to do and how to play it, and it’s just a matter of who can execute over the four days.

Rory, what do you attribute your struggles in the first round at Majors to, since you last won one?

Rory: Probably just putting a little too much pressure on myself, playing too carefully, being a little tentative. I think that sort of sums it up.

What was it like meeting Yuka (Saso) yesterday, and what advice did you give her?

Rory: It was great. I watched a lot of the Women’s Open a couple of weeks ago, and it was cool. I first saw Yuka and her swing and sort of read about her story at the previous U.S. Women’s Open in Texas in December of 2020, and it’s pretty cool. I think she played okay there, and obviously she played great at Olympic, and it was cool to meet her. It was cool to let her follow for a few holes.

Obviously, the talk turned to the golf swing and all that sort of stuff, and all I really said to her — she asked how can she be consistent for a long time and how can she keep this sort of form going into the future? And I just said, what I’ve always tried to do is write everything down. Just whatever feelings you have after a practice session, even if the swing looks the same on the video, the feelings that you have and the swing thoughts could be slightly different, and those feelings and those thoughts can come and go day to day. That’s just the way golf is.

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But I think if you write everything down and sort of keep of a journal of that sort of stuff, it’s always a reference point to go back to. So that’s all I was trying to tell her is to — it’s boring to be at the top of the game for a very long time.

You just have to keep doing the same things. Whatever works — and it is mundane, and it’s tedious, but everyone’s got a blueprint of what their swing is, and if they keep on top of it and they do the same things, do the same drills, over time, you fast forward 20 years, you’re probably going to have a really good career.

Pete was saying a couple of days ago that he thinks you’re making real progress with your swing. What do you feel you’re up to now?

Rory: I feel good. Pete and I had a few really good days in Florida last week. Yeah, like the technical and mechanical parts of it are all there. It’s just a matter of going out in a U.S. Open setting and just trusting what I’ve been doing in practice, and then that gets more into the mental side of things and just being really clear and really committed in what you’re trying to do and being as free on the course as I am on the range. That’s the big challenge, but in terms of where everything’s heading, it’s definitely in the right direction. Yeah, we had me really good days last week.

When you’re driven and desperate to win Majors again, how do you take the pressure off yourself?

Rory: I guess by being indifferent. Not by not caring, but by not putting myself under pressure that I have to care, I guess is the right way to do it. If I went out and played this golf course any other week, you play free, and it’s just the same thing. As I said, you just have to be able to swing with that freedom, and that’s sort of what I’m trying to get back to.

There’s no surprise that if I do have, say, not a great first day that I’m able to play well the rest of the tournament because that does free you up. It’s like, okay, well, the bad one’s out of the way, and now I can just sort of freewheel. It’s just a matter of freewheeling from the Thursday and not the Friday.

Looking back on your 2011 U.S. Open win, how would you compare your mentality heading into the U.S. Open week then to now?

Rory: Yeah, I think the ’11 U.S. Open was only my third one, and I played okay at Bethpage in ’09, I missed the cut at Pebble in ’10. Yeah, probably just a little less going on in my head, I guess, is the best way to describe it. Probably a little less cynical too. Sometimes I think you can sort of get into that mindset coming into U.S. Opens.

Yeah, just trying to — first time I laid my eyes on Congressional, I thought, you know, I could see myself shooting scores out here. It’s the same as here. You hit fairways, you hit greens, and you can shoot good scores. It’s just a matter of getting into a little more of a positive mindset going into the tournament.

You’ve left frustrated from the big tournaments so far this year, but how close do you think you are to changing the narrative a little bit maybe this week?

Rory: At Augusta, I was still in the middle of a transition of stuck in between what I was trying to do in my swing, and it wasn’t a great week. Kiawah, I felt like I went into the week playing pretty well. I struggled on the left-to-right winds there. So even from the first tee shot on Thursday, hitting it into the water on 10.

Since then, I’ve changed my driver setup a little bit, and I feel a lot more comfortable with that. If I’d have played the par-5s the same way that Phil played them at Kiawah, I’d have won the golf tournament. I just played the par-5s so badly. But every time you play a tournament, you learn something, and you try to put that into practice the next week. But it’s not as if — you know, I won a tournament four or five weeks ago, so it’s there.

Probably walking off Muirfield Village a couple Sundays ago, I said to Harry, I felt like I played better at Memorial than I did at Quail Hollow. I finished 18th at Memorial, and I won Quail Hollow. It’s golf at the end of the day and sometimes it’s just unpredictable.

I’m feeling good about where my game is. As I said at the very start, it’s about going out there and playing as free as I can and having that mentality that I had as a 22-year-old and just trying to get into that mindset.

Text courtesy: USGA

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