There’s no easy mechanism to recalibrate the system, no recharge button to hit. Not straight away, anyway, as Rory McIlroy – who achieved his life’s ambition when completing the career Grand Slam at the Masters in April – has found in his attempt to rediscover his early-season dominance.
McIlroy had won the Pebble Beach pro-am and The Players prior to finally adding the green jacket to his wardrobe at Augusta. Since then? It has not been the same. Whether it is finding motivation, or technical issues with his driver, the Northern Irishman has yet to find his mojo again and a missed cut at the Canadian Open only underscored a dip in form.
Perhaps the penny has dropped on the back of that missed weekend, which at least allowed him the chance to return home to Florida and range test more drivers before putting it into his TaylorMade bag – a special edition commemorating the club manufacturer’s Pittsburgh Persimmon, aka the first metal driver used in the sport dating back to 1979 – for this 125th edition of the US Open.
Of finding a way to get back to the McIlroy of just a few months ago, the player observed of what was required.
“Look, you dream about the final putt going in at the Masters, but you don’t think about what comes next.
“I think it’s trying to have a little bit of amnesia and forget about what happened six weeks ago. Then just trying to find the motivation to go back out there and work as hard as I’ve been working. I worked incredibly hard on my game from October last year all the way up until April this year. It was nice to sort of see the fruits of my labour come to fruition and have everything happen.
“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 realise that there’s a little bit more golf left to play this season, here, Portrush, Ryder Cup, so those are obviously the three big things that I’m sort of looking at for the rest of the year.
But I think weeks like Quail Hollow [US PGA] or even weeks like last week [in Canada], it makes it easier to reset in some way, to be like, ‘okay, 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 wouldn’t hold any credence that he might have some unfinished business in the US Open here at Oakmont having finished runner-up for the past two years, most heartbreakingly in losing out to Bryson DeChambeau at Pinehurst last year.
Yet, there is the sense that it would be a good time and place to get competitive again. “I think chasing a certain goal for the better part of a decade and a half, I think I’m allowed a little bit of time to relax a little bit. But here at Oakmont, I certainly can’t relax this week.”
Time for that reset.
