The three Irish players from the 50th anniversary of The Players departed Sawgrass with different travelling itineraries: for Shane Lowry, it was on to the next tour stop, in his case a long-haul flight to Singapore; for Séamus Power, it was a four-hour drive across Florida to Palm Harbor for the Valspar Championship; and, for Rory McIlroy, a matter of going back home to Jupiter, with his thoughts.
McIlroy’s bumped-up schedule ahead of next month’s Masters at Augusta National has yet to provide the feel-good vibe, with his game – especially the inconsistency in scoring from hole-to-hole – yet to settle to a point of any comfort zone.
Of that worrying volatility in his game, McIlroy observed: “I think it’s swing related. My misses last week (in Bay Hill) were predominantly to the left. So I really tried to eradicate that (in Sawgrass) and, for the most part with the irons, I did. But [then] started to get a left miss off the tee.
“Golf is a very fickle game. it gives you one thing and then takes away something else from you. It’s just, again, like, I feel I’ve got all the components there but just trying to put them all together on a given week, that’s the tricky part at the minute.”
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No doubt McIlroy will factor in many trips to The Bears club to continue to work out those chinks in his game, and he will get an opportunity to put them through a final on-course test session with card in hand when he plays in the Valero Texas Open the week before the Masters.
As of now, McIlroy doesn’t intend to carry out any advance visits to Augusta National which is how he prepared in more recent years for that tilt at completing the career Grand Slam.
As he put it, “When I do it before, I don’t feel like I get a ton out of it. Like in terms of like preparation for the week and actually getting into the mindset I need to get into. So maybe [I might consider] a quick pit stop on the way to San Antonio to play a practice round and spend some time. But nothing planned as of yet.”
McIlroy’s form on the PGA Tour since returning stateside after winning the Dubai Desert Classic on the DP World Tour back in January has yet to ignite, certainly by his standards, with results of t66th-t24th-t21st-t21st-t19th in his tournament outings.
Lowry, in contrast, has played his way into a terrific vein of form and followed up his fourth placed finish in the Cognizant with a third in the Arnold Palmer Invitational and then finished tied-19th alongside McIlroy in The Players. “Some great progress made the last few weeks,” claimed Lowry, ahead of flying on to the Porsche Singapore Classic where the 2019 Open champion is one of the headliners in the field.
Since falling out of the world’s top 50 last month, Lowry’s form has seen him move from 57th to 54th to 37th to his current position of 34th in the official world rankings.
For his part, Power is remaining on in Florida for the Valspar Championship where the Waterford man will aim to continue a recent run – he has missed only one cut this season, at the Farmers Insurance Open in January – as he takes a different build-up to the Masters.
On the LPGA Tour, Leona Maguire and Stephanie Meadow resume their playing schedules in the Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship at Palos Verdes in California on the LPGA Tour.
