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The clubs Rory McIlroy used to win the 2022 CJ Cup

Golf Digest Middle East — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 12:21:51 +0000

By E Michael Johnson
Rory McIlroy has stuck it to Scottie Scheffler the last couple months. First, McIlroy made up six shots on Scheffler in the final round to win the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup title in August. Now McIlroy has dethroned Scheffler as the No. 1 player in the world after a seven-birdie, three-bogey final-round 67 to win the CJ Cup in South Carolina and ascend once again as the best player in the game.

McIlroy spent most of the round at Congaree Golf Club locked in a duel with Kurt Kitayama, the pair tied at 16 under par before McIlroy broke the deadlock with back-to-back birdies on the par-3 14th and par-4 15th.

On 14, the four-time major champion hit a fabulous tee shot from 227 yards that finished 13 feet from the hole before rolling in the putt. On 15, a drivable par 4, he unleashed a 324-yard drive to a sandy area 25 yards from the hole. McIlroy proceeded to knock his second shot to five feet and convert to give himself a two-shot cushion.

He expanded that to three — which he ultimately needed after a couple late stumbles — with another birdie at the 16th after making a 21-footer.

McIlroy’s irons are TaylorMade’s “Rors Proto” muscleback blades based off the company’s P730 irons, and he picked up nearly four shots on the field with his approach shots. On the greens, he was 15th in strokes gained/putting, gaining more than six shots on the field with his TaylorMade Spider X mallet. He also ranked third in putts per green in regulation.

Still, as it almost always is when he contends, the key weapon for McIlroy was his 9-degree TaylorMade Stealth Plus driver with a Fujikura Ventus Black 6x shaft.

McIlroy led the field in driving distance at 349.6 yards, a number difficult to comprehend. And for those who note that the stat is based off only the two holes formally measured for the distance stat, McIlroy did not hit a tee shot on a par 4 or par 5 less than 300 yards on Sunday except for a safety shot on 18. And all but two of McIlroy’s drives were more than 320 yards, including a 385-yard bomb (the second-longest tee shot of the entire week) that set up a birdie at the par-5 fourth.

Not surprisingly he was first in strokes gained/off the tee, picking up nearly six shots on the field.

All of which led to another number: the ninth time McIlroy has reached World No. 1.

What Rory McIlroy had in the bag at the 2022 CJ Cup
Ball: TaylorMade TP5x
Driver: TaylorMade Stealth Plus (Fujikura Ventus Black 6x), 9 degrees
3-wood: TaylorMade SIM2, 15 degrees
5-wood: TaylorMade Stealth Plus, 19 degrees
Irons (3-9): TaylorMade Rors Proto; (PW): TaylorMade Milled Grind 3
Wedges: TaylorMade Milled Grind 3 (54, 58 degrees)
Putter: TaylorMade Spider X Hydro Blast

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Rory McIlroy on his emotional return to World No. 1: ‘I’m enjoying the game as much as I ever have’

Golf Digest Middle East — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 05:33:03 +0000

By Evin Priest
Rory McIlroy’s climb back to the top of the golf world began with an empty stomach. Six months and three weeks prior to winning the CJ Cup on Sunday to take his place again as the No. 1 ranked golfer in the world, the four-time major winner missed the cut at the Valero Texas Open in late March. That same Friday night, he also missed dinner. The tournament hotel was so busy McIlroy decided it was easier to skip food than wait hours for it.

“I guess there was some party on Friday night [in the hotel], and I was feeling pretty bad,” McIlroy recalled on Sunday at Congaree Golf Club. “I went to order room service and they said it would be a two-and-a-half-hour wait. I missed the cut and went to bed on an empty stomach, and I was like, let’s just wake up tomorrow and start again.”

Ninth on the Official World Golf Ranking at the time — before the OWGR became the point of contention it is these days — McIlroy’s fasting session prompted a mid-year rebuild that culminated in Ridgeland, South Carolina, with the 34-year-old Northern Irishman winning his 31st professional tournament, his 23rd career PGA Tour title and his third of 2022. A final-round 67 included four birdies in a five-hole stretch on the back nine that allowed McIlroy to bogey the final two holes and still win by one over Kurt Kitayama with a 17-under 267 total. And it put him back as the best player in the world for the first time since July 2020.

McIlroy could not have imagined the highs and lows that have transpired since his early exit from TPC San Antonio. A week after Valero, McIlroy holed a 72nd-hole bunker shot at Augusta National for a 64 and a career-best second place at the Masters. He finished eighth at the PGA Championship in May, won the RBC Canadian Open and then tied fifth at the US Open in June. In July, McIlroy surrendered a 54-hole lead at the Open at St Andrews, where he finished third, before bouncing back to win the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup in August.

Can’t ask for a better start to the season than this. Extremely proud of the work that I have put in to get back to World No. 1. So grateful for the support of my team and fans all over the world. @congareegolf is an incredible place and the fans this week were amazing. pic.twitter.com/LHK9PfQdSa

— Rory McIlroy (@McIlroyRory) October 24, 2022

“If someone had told me [that] Friday night at Valero that I would be World No. 1 by October, I would have asked them what they were smoking because I would not have believed them,” McIlroy said. “It’s been a wild six months.”

Those six months haven’t only been wild on the course. The emergence of LIV Golf has created a bitter divide in men’s professional golf with the rival circuit taking a host of PGA Tour stars including World No. 3 and Open Championship winner Cameron Smith. Through it all, McIlroy has almost looked comfortable in the chaos of being the PGA Tour’s torchbearer, inside and outside the ropes.

All three of his victories this year have been timely in the feud with LIV; on the same June weekend that LIV kicked off its inaugural event in England, McIlroy shot 62 to defeat Justin Thomas in Canada. In late August, with rumours swirling that a raft of PGA Tour players were about to sign with LIV, McIlroy won his third FedEx Cup title at East Lake and declared the PGA Tour “the best place to play golf”. This week, McIlroy ensured that he will be spoken and written about as World No. 1 while LIV prepares to host its season finale at Trump Doral outside Miami.

“All three wins I’ve had to go out there and win them,” McIlroy said. “I went out with a lead today and shot four-under to win. I think that’s been the most satisfying thing. In all three wins I went out there and got the job done.”

It’s not just the wins, but the other finishes, too. In his 15 starts since Valero, he has 12 top-10s, 10 top-fives and one lone (and now truly bizarre) missed cut.

Although McIlroy drew a line in the sand after San Antonio, the real reset began after an unsuccessful and emotional performance at the Ryder Cup in September 2021. McIlroy choked back tears after defeating Xander Schauffele in singles for his only point for Europe at Whistling Straits. He also dropped to 16th in the world. Weeks later, McIlroy won the 2021 CJ Cup in Las Vegas to kick off his renaissance.

A year later, the full-circle moment of defending his CJ title was why McIlroy was so emotional on the 18th green on Sunday at Congaree.

“I’ve worked so hard over the last 12 months to get myself back to this place. This tournament last year was start of me building myself back up to this point,” said McIlroy, who started the day with a one-shot advantage on Kitayama, Jon Rahm and KH Lee and closed out his 10th win in 17 tries when leading after 54 holes. “I had a really rough Ryder Cup. I was outside top 10 in the world and it’s not a position I’m used to being in.”

Rory McIlroy smiles after winning the 2012 Honda Classic and jumping to World No. 1 for the first time in his career. Mike Ehrmann

This is now the ninth time that McIlroy sits atop the World Ranking, a milestone he first achieved after winning the Honda Classic in 2012. McIlroy will enjoy his 107th total week as World No. 1, which brings him closer to Dustin Johnson, who sits in third for longest serving No. 1s with 135 weeks. Greg Norman, the two time Open champion turned LIV Golf CEO, is second (331) behind all-time leader Tiger Woods (683).

So what’s different about this trip back to the top of the golf world? McIlroy says it’s the team around him. He admitted earlier this week his maiden stint at No. 1 felt like an anti-climax. Now he has people to share the success with. His wife Erica, daughter Poppy, caddie Harry Diamond, long-time coach Michael Bannon, agent Sean O’ Flaherty, putting coach Brad Faxon and mental coach Dr Bob Rotella. McIlroy named all of them in his winning press conference Sunday night.

“The steady climb back to the summit of world golf and what it takes. It’s not a solo effort and I think about everyone that has made a difference in my life,” he said. “There are a lot of people that deserve all the plaudits. When I think about that, that’s what gets me choked up and emotional. It’s really cool to be on this journey with other people that you want to be on the journey with.”

There is still one more tournament for McIlroy in 2022; he’ll travel to Dubai next month for the DP World Tour’s season finale, where he’ll try to win another season-long points title. After that, though, he won’t play an official PGA Tour event until the Sentry Tournament of Champions in January. At that point, the questions will no doubt start circling over whether McIlroy can deliver a long-awaited fifth major championship in 2023.

But for right now, McIlroy is going to celebrate and avoid thinking about majors. He’s just having fun.

“I feel like I’m enjoying the game as much as I ever have.”

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Jon Rahm had a spectacular round at CJ Cup that only a handful of pros could pull off

Golf Digest Middle East — Sat, 22 Oct 2022 14:31:17 +0000

By E Michael Johnson
My. Word.

It doesn’t take much more than that to describe Jon Rahm’s second round at the CJ Cup. Rahm scorched Congaree Golf Club with a nine-under-par 62 on Friday that had a number of highlight-reel moments, giving the PGA Tour’s social-media team plenty to put on its Twitter feed. Rahm will share the 36-hole co-lead with Kurt Kitayama after a lone bogey on the finishing hole — the only blemish on a scorecard few players could generate.

9th birdie of the day for @JonRahmPGA ?

He moves into the co-lead. pic.twitter.com/qk1c2Gicnk

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) October 21, 2022

Like four birdies in a row on Nos. 3 through 6 plus and another at No. 8 — a holed shot from the sandy area after a mis-hit approach Rahm called “atrocious”. Or the 35-foot bomb he dropped for birdie on No. 10. Or the 25-footer that fell for another at the 13th. Or another 25-footer from the fringe at 16. Then there was the topper: a 7-iron approach from 195 yards at the 17th that Rahm thought was 20 feet short, but actually just missed dropping for an eagle and would have had Rahm sniffing at a potential 59.

The cheers mean it went in ?@JonRahmPGA is on fire at Congaree pic.twitter.com/CSFAUtR3iN

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) October 21, 2022

Such displays almost made the 12-footer for birdie at 15 seem ho-hum. And none of that is even counting the missed three-footer for birdie at the ninth or the sick pitch shot he hit at the 12th that nearly led to another birdie. How good was Rahm? His was the day’s low round by three shots and his 10 birdies were the second-most in a round for his career, falling one short of the 11 he made during the third round of this year’s Sentry Tournament of Champions.

Earlier this week, Rahm referred to last season on the PGA Tour as “what hasn’t been my best PGA Tour season”. Many pros were likely shaking their heads. A win, eight top-10 finishes and more than $5.5 million in earnings would be a career and then some to many players. But when you have 43 weeks as the World No. 1 and a US Open win on the CV, the bar is understandably higher. Fortunately for Rahm, he seems to have found a recipe for success.

Coming off a win in the Spanish Open in his homeland, Rahm noted this past Tuesday that playing well in Europe often translates to bigger things.

“Hopefully I can keep that good play going and translate those wins to the PGA Tour, which I’ve done in the past,” Rahm said. “I’ve played great in the fall on the European Tour in the past and I’ve translated it to the PGA Tour. I’m confident. I mean, it’s showing. I’ve been working on some things and clearly, it’s been working, so hopefully I can keep it going this week.”

Through two rounds Rahm’s words offer the kind of prescience usually reserved for psychics. As for those things Rahm has been working on, “it’s a little setup thing, it’s very small,” he said of his putting.

For the day he was first in strokes gained/approach-the-green as well as strokes gained/around the green. He also was in the top 10 in strokes gained/putting and off the tee. Put those numbers in a data blender and it adds up to the Congaree course record falling.

“I would say my iron game was a little bit better today,” Rahm said. “Yesterday was one of those days where I just couldn’t seem to find the centre of the face. Lines were good, just wasn’t truly comfortable, and it’s hard to score that way. Today was a bit of a different story. It was much better off the tee, and with the irons I felt better and was able to be a little more aggressive and give myself a lot of birdie looks and a lot of close ones.”

Making 125 feet of putts and only needing 22 strokes on the greens also helps, especially after an off day with the putter in the first round.

“Yesterday, speed was a bit of a challenge,” Rahm said. “I hadn’t putted on greens this fast and this slick in quite a while, especially being in Europe the last few months. It took me a little bit to get used to it.”

Rahm pointed to a putt he made on the third hole as key. “Making that little slider on 3, you get a putt that’s 10 feet breaking quite a bit, downhill with the proper pace and even the putts I hit on Nos. 1 and 2 were good so from the get-go my speed was good.” he said. “I felt comfortable, and the rest of the game accompanied the putting.”

When the rest of the game accompanies putting like that, we can only say: My. Word.

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Players count the reasons why the field is so strong this week for CJ Cup

Golf Digest Middle East — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 07:52:19 +0000

By Evin Priest
If you want a bunch of top players to show up to a tournament, a good way to go about it is to have a $10.5 million purse and no 36-hole cut. That’s usually the recipe for a deep field in the world of touring professional golf. But things get complicated as the end of a calendar year draws closer, and so the elite field that the 78-man CJ Cup has produced this week in at Congaree Golf Club in South Carolina was not a fait accompli.

Many golf fans are probably wondering why an event in late October — and a week after the PGA Tour just held a tournament in Japan — has a field boasting 21 of the top 30 players in the world, including No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, defending CJ Cup champion Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, US Open winner Matt Fitzpatrick, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Tom Kim and Collin Morikawa. Thirty six of the 78 players who competed in Japan last week, including winner Keegan Bradley, will also tee it up at Congaree.

For Billy Horschel, a resident of Ponte Vedra Beach, there was one easy reason why he decided to play his 24th official tournament of the year.

“If it wasn’t two-and-a-half hours from my house, I would have taken October off like I did last year. I didn’t go play CJ Cup last year in Vegas,” Horschel said on Tuesday at Congaree. “I can drive here, so that was that was a big factor in it.”

Horschel has recently returned from playing two flagship events in the UK on the DP World Tour — the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland. One would think he’d be fatigued by this stage, but several prominent players from the recent European swing are also in the field this week — including BMW PGA winner Shane Lowry, McIlroy and Fitzpatrick.

Fitzpatrick, who captured his first major at The Country Club at Brookline in June, said the reason DP World Tour stars were eager to play the CJ Cup was its timing in their transatlantic schedules. It will be the last PGA Tour event of the year for many of the Europeans before they head to Dubai next month for the DP World Tour Championship.

Similar to Horschel’s road trip from Ponte Vedra, the proximity to Jupiter and Palm Beach, where Fitzpatrick, Lowry and McIlroy are based, also helped.

“It’s only one hour, 15 minutes on the plane from where I live,” Fitzpatrick said. “But it’s the timing in the schedule. You can play here and then can shut it down [PGA Tour-wise] for the rest of the year. I’ve got three weeks off before Dubai, so it fits nicely.”

Fitzpatrick tied for 10th when the PGA Tour came to Congaree last year, when South African Garrick Higgo captured the one-off Palmetto Championship held just before the US Open.

Three-time major winner Spieth is also signing off on the PGA Tour for 2022 after Congaree, although he won’t play the DP World Tour finale in Dubai. Spieth will take some time off before likely playing in Tiger Woods’ Hero World Challenge event in early December. The 29-year-old wants a rest but doesn’t want to be punished in the form of a FedEx Cup points deficit come January, when the PGA Tour starts back up at the Sentry Tournament of Champions at Maui’s Kapalua course. This will also be the last edition of the PGA Tour’s wraparound schedule. That’s why Spieth is at Congaree.

“I don’t want to start really behind like I have last two years come Kapalua, so it would be really nice to get off to a good start and have a strong finish here because I think this is probably the only FedEx Cup event that I’m able to play this fall,” Spieth said.

And then there’s the golf course. Several players have listed the design at Congaree as one of the lures for this CJ Cup. Maybe not the biggest draw, but still enticing. Congaree is a thoughtful design that meanders through sandy terrain and pine trees in rural Ridgeland, S.C. At its core is a links-style layout where the ground game is more prevalent than some other venues on the PGA Tour.

Tom Fazio has designed many compelling golf courses on sites that weren’t great. But at Congaree, 30 minutes inland from Beaufort, South Carolina, Fazio at least had great material: sand, in the form of two deep sections of it separated by a low-country wetland area. The sand made it easy to scoop and shape long ridge lines, creating significant movement across an otherwise level property — and dozens of stately live oaks, carefully transplanted for effect — further outline the design. Finely edged Melbourne-style bunkers sweep up to the edges of fairways and against greens, catching shots that drift too far and leading to challenging hi-lo recovery situations. Congaree hosts the 2022 CJ Cup after making its debut as a tour venue for the previous year’s Palmetto Championship, which replaced that year’s Canadian Open.

Spieth said the strategy required at Congaree was similar to Australia’s Melbourne Sandbelt, where courses such as Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath share some resemblance to Congaree. Spieth has won two Australian Opens, and although they were both in Sydney, he has made plenty of social trips to the Melbourne Sandbelt while Down Under.

“There’s no rough, so it kind of has a little bit of that Sandbelt feel with the packed kind of sandy areas everywhere,” Spieth said. “I love just these giant trees that shape the holes and tee shots [at Congaree]. There’s a mix of some easier holes, some really meaty hard holes, some bigger green surfaces and some tiny tabletop-type greens on par 5s and short par 4s.”

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Rickie Fowler passed a ridiculous earnings benchmark in Las Vegas

Golf Digest Middle East — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 22:51:19 +0000

Alex Goodlett

By Joel Beall
Rickie Fowler did not cash in on his 54-hole lead at the CJ Cup, an uneven Sunday leading to a T-3 finish at The Summit Club, but the week was still a victory for the five-time tour winner. For a man who’s spent the past few seasons stuck in neutral, a T-3—his first such finish since 2019—was a move forward.

“It’s definitely nice,” Fowler said Sunday evening. “It felt good to finally hit the golf ball properly, at least most of the time, for 72 holes. A lot of quality shots, a lot of good swings this week. Drove the ball well, which set me up to play golf around this place. … We did a really good job.”

The performance skyrocketed Fowler up the World Ranking, jumping from 128th to 82nd. And his performance pushed Fowler past a notable financial benchmark as well.

By banking a cool $565,500 in Las Vegas, Fowler became the 24th player in PGA Tour history to amass $40,000,000 in career earnings.

Yes, the career earnings list is a very modern list—32-year-old Rory McIlroy, who captured the CJ Cup, is sixth in all-time earnings, with Jordan Spieth coming in at 13th and Justin Thomas at 18th—underlining how lucrative the profession has become over the last two decades. Nevertheless, it’s mighty fine company to be in, one Fowler—despite his recent struggles—deserves.

“A lot of good stuff,” Fowler said. “Obviously disappointed [not to win], but this is a big step in the right direction with where we’ve been.”

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Rory McIlroy undergoes an increasingly common journey: The return to a ‘true self’

Golf Digest Middle East — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 04:07:45 +0000

Christian Petersen

By Shane Ryan
If you’re a recreational golfer, especially one who likes to spend time on the range, you’ve likely had this experience at some point: A single swing thought clicks into place and you start hitting the ball very well—and very consistently. Your confidence grows with the success, and after another dozen great shots, it becomes irresistible to add a little something—a new move, more speed, anything. It even works, at first, and a good thing becomes even better. Then, slowly and subtly, you start to lose it. The thing you added spirals out of your control, and you’re not sure exactly how to fix it. The shots get worse, and perhaps unconsciously, in ways you won’t realise until later, you lean into the new thing rather than losing it, which only makes things worse. By the time your bucket of balls runs out, you’re a sweaty, angry mess, and those perfect moments from just minutes earlier are a distant memory. It’s only later, with clarity, that you are able to revert back to the original thought and rediscover your form for next time.

If that sounds familiar, you’ve experienced in microcosm, and in metaphor, what many professional golfers endure over a period of years. The beats are all the same: the initial success, honed in whatever unique style they possess, that gets them to the top of the sport. This is often followed by the nagging desire to constantly tweak and improve, which leads to a departure from what worked in the first place, which leads to the golfing wilderness and the blind struggle to escape, which leads to a thousand false solutions, which is finally resolved—if it’s resolved at all—only by returning to the “true self” that propelled them to the heights in the first place.

Rory McIlroy, who has never given a dull interview, hit this theme hard after his victory Sunday the CJ Cup.

“I feel like the last couple weeks I’ve realised that just being me is good enough,” McIlroy said, “and maybe the last few months I was trying … not trying to be someone else, but maybe trying to add things to my game or take things away from my game. I know that when I do the things that I do well, this is what I’m capable of. … That starts with being creative and being visual and maybe sort of sifting through the technical thoughts and not maybe being as technical with it. … Sometimes I forgot that in a quest to try to be too perfect probably, but this week was a great reminder that you don’t need to be perfect to be a great golfer.”

As far as epiphanies go, it may sound basic, but in a game like golf that is so fickle even for the best players, where the default strategy is to master the technical side of the game in an attempt to reduce and control the chaos that constantly threatens, it seems to have struck him as especially profound. The idea that he’s good enough to trust himself, to simply visualise what he wants to do and then execute, seems to have run contrary to how he was operating before, and the effect on his psyche—you can feel it from afar—is liberating. Two weeks ago, he was ready to give up golf for the year in frustration. Now he’s a champion again.

He’s not alone in experiencing this trajectory, though each player’s epiphany looks a bit different. Coming up on the PGA Tour, Steve Stricker was the constant victim of an inferiority complex and impostor syndrome. As a northerner from a small town, he naggingly felt like he didn’t belong, even as his game proved otherwise. It took him a longer time than it should have to make the tour, and after he achieved some initial success with two wins in 1996, his confidence was rattled to the core the first time he played with Tiger Woods.

“After the first round had ended,” he wrote later in The Players Tribune, “I told Nicki, my wife and caddie, what I had been thinking since the moment we left the course: ‘I can’t compete with that type of game. I just can’t compete with that.’”

Tracy Wilcox
Steve Stricker suffered an imposter syndrome at the start of his career, fearing others would “see” his game wasn’t good enough to be on the PGA Tour.

Like McIlroy, Stricker saw his game suffer, though he fell to greater depths and for a much longer time, even losing his tour card in the process. Doubt plagued him, the work he had put in to get to that point felt “meaningless” and the path back to the top was unclear. In Stricker’s case, chasing distance was one of his unwise deviations, but the overarching theme was the same.

“I realised that I was exerting too much of my time and energy trying to play golf like someone who I wasn’t,” he wrote.

Stricker had his own epiphany, returned to a former style of play (and perhaps of being), found happiness and entered the golden age of his career in the late 2000s, winning nine events in five years and rising as high as No. 2 in the world.

“My advice to young golfers may be cliché,” he wrote, “but it’s still incredibly important: Don’t try to fix something that isn’t broken. Golfers on the PGA Tour are at the highest level because they’ve stayed true to their game.”

And they fall off the top, to hear them tell it, because they fail to stay true. Brendon Todd doesn’t just have one of the tour’s greatest comebacks to his name—he has two of them. Twice, he fell so low in the World Ranking that he was considering taking another job, and as recently as 2018 he had plans to meet with a financial adviser to talk about starting a fast-food franchise. When he lost his game, he really lost it, and like so many before him, he chased solutions anywhere. What changed things, finally, was a coach named Bradley Hughes whose task at its simplest was to return him to “normal,” and let the brilliant parts of his game shine.

The same is true for Harris English. A former Georgia Bulldog like Todd, English is a recent member of the victorious U.S. Ryder Cup team and one of the best players in the sport. Only a few years ago, however, he’d fallen to 149th in the world after a promising start to his career, before making his own comeback journey. When asked to explain what changed, he credited his coach and, time and again throughout the year, returned to the explanation of “going back to what I did well.”

Jamie Squire
Harris English went from promising star out of college to struggling pro before ‘going back to what I did well.’

It seems so easy, when you hear players like these say the words, but it’s plainly so hard. The phrase “know thyself” comes to us from ancient Greece and is so well-travelled at this point that it may be the ultimate platitude. But as we see from players like McIlroy and Stricker and Todd and English and countless others, it may be the most important philosophical principle in professional golf.

Having started with a scenario the recreational golfer can relate to, let’s end with another: Have you ever given up the game for a while, either by choice or by necessity, and then returning after weeks or months or even years away? If so, you may have experienced another common phenomenon in your first time back, in which you prepare yourself to struggle, you expect to struggle, and you resign yourself to months of work to recapture your form … only to play far better than you could have dreamed.

It’s hard to know why this happens, but maybe it’s as simple as forgetting the accumulations of unwieldy knowledge that bogged you down and returning to a purer form of play that on some level, your body and mind can execute intuitively. For so many PGA Tour players, the process to regaining the lost heights is exactly the same—it takes years, but it’s no more complicated than rediscovering the truth, as players and as people, of who they really are.

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The important lesson Rory McIlroy learned that led to his 20th PGA Tour win

Golf Digest Middle East — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 04:50:21 +0000

By Dan Rapaport
The man has 20 PGA Tour wins at 32 years old. Twenty. Think on that for a minute. Because with Rory McIlroy, the temptation is to view things through the lens of what he has not accomplished. It’s a shame, but an understandable one—he’s the most gifted player of the post-Tiger Woods era, and he feasted on majors in his younger years. It’s a recipe for the burden of expectation that weighs on a golfer. But part of it is self-inflicted. McIlroy has made the choice (mistake?) to adopt an unusually candid and vulnerable disposition. When he’s going through something, he tells everybody. He told us for years that golf doesn’t define him, and then he told us he uses that as a crutch. He cried at the Ryder Cup. It all results in so many golf fans feeling a parasocial connection to a man they have never met. Admit it, you feel like you know Rory.

But zoom out for a minute. Yes, McIlroy has been frustratingly feeble in majors of late, and yes, he’d probably have a fuller trophy cabinet if such pursuits consumed him. Divert your attention to the facts, devoid of narrative, and what you’ll see is remarkable. With a vintage display of devastating mastery, McIlroy followed up a Saturday 62 with the easiest 66 you ever did see at The Summit Club in Las Vegas—a pretty golf course that was quite clearly designed for high-rollers, not PGA Tour players. With that, he claimed a one-shot victory at the CJ Cup and joins Woods, Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson as the only golfers younger than 55 years old with 20 victories.

Beneath the Rory-coaster lies an all-time great.

“What I thought was an achievement at the start of my career when I turned pro was to get into the top-20 in the world,” McIlroy said. “So I’ve surpassed all of that. But as you go on, your goals, you have to reframe everything, and you have to keep resetting your goals. As I’ve went along in my career, I’ve had to do that because you just, you keep going. You can’t just stagnate and stay the same, you have to try to keep getting better and keep doing more things.”

MORE: The clubs Rory McIlroy used to win the CJ Cup

McIlroy has now won twice in 2021, last victorious at Quail Hollow and the Wells Fargo Championship in May. He was unremarkable in the five months afterward and tumbled outside the top 10 in the World Ranking, hard-to-believe territory for a man who was kissed by the golfing gods. How ironic, then, that he believes the semi-slump was borne of a self-belief crisis.

“I feel like the last couple weeks I’ve realized that just being me is good enough and maybe the last few months I was trying … not trying to be someone else, but maybe trying to add things to my game or take things away from my game. I know that when I do the things that I do well, this is what I’m capable of. I’m capable of winning a lot of events on the PGA Tour and being the best player in the world.”

He began Sunday two shots behind Rickie Fowler, the man who was supposed to keep pace with McIlroy in the hardware department. Golf, as it so often does, had other plans. Fowler has not won a tournament in 33 months and hasn’t been close, either. As the world No. 128, he needed a sponsor’s invite to get into the field. Forget the Masters; dude’s not even exempt for The Players, which he won for the biggest of his five career tour wins in 2015. This, then, was an extraordinary opportunity to cut a huge corner on the comeback trail. No one mistook this for a major—everyone in the field gets paid, the course was woefully over-matched and the wind that promised to show face Sunday succumbed to a Vegas hangover and stay in bed—but 15 of the world’s top 20 teed it up, and nearly all 15 of the world’s top 20 means something in any context.

For only the second time on the PGA Tour, Rory McIlroy led the field in strokes gained/putting (2018 Arnold Palmer Invitational). Both times he walked away the winner. Christian Petersen

It was the world No. 3 who threatened to crash the party with a blistering spell on his home course. Collin Morikawa played his first 11 holes in eight under par, but only those lucky few on-site were able to witness it. Fall events fall victim to NFL football, and the PGA Tour Champions event went into a playoff to shrink short Golf Channel coverage window even further. When the good stuff did finally find the airwaves, Morikawa he hit a wall that so often greets red-hot players when they begin to sniff a trophy. It wasn’t a big wall—he parred six holes in a row before a closing eagle, but such barren stretches simply would not suffice at Summit. He signed for 62, which he equals his best round at his stomping grounds. He shot one while casually riding in a cart and he shot the other while in contention on Sunday of a tour event. That says something profound about how these men are wired.

“I pretty much knew the course like the back of my hand,” Morikawa said. “Normally, I’m taking a lot of notes in my yardage book drawing arrows, drawing Xs, but didn’t do that this week. I just went out and played like I normally would.

Fowler’s putter got cold, which torpedoed his chances, but he still achieved the highly elusive feat of leaving Las Vegas feeling better than when he arrived.

“It’s definitely nice. It felt good to finally hit the golf ball properly, at least most of the time, for 72 holes,” Fowler said after finishing tied for third. “A lot of quality shots, a lot of good swings this week. Drove the ball well, which set me up to play golf around this place.”

Morikawa’s closing eagle brought his total to 24 under. It might’ve been enough had McIlroy not holed a 35-footer for eagle on 15, which allowed him to play conservative off the tee on both 17 (hybrid) and 18 (3-wood). Conservative targets, that is, for those were not conservative swings. McIlroy was at his swaggering best on this windless afternoon, bouncing around the golf course like he used to as a pudgy 21-year-old. But there was a twist—McIlroy led the field in strokes gained/putting for just the second time in his career. The other was the 2018 Arnold Palmer Invitational. He won that, too. When a generationally good ball-striker stumbles upon a hot putter … well, Aaron Oberholser said it best on the broadcast: “When Rory McIlroy is playing like this, it’s like every other guy in the field brought a knife to a gunfight.”

McIlroy’s 20 wins earns him lifetime PGA Tour membership after he wraps up his 15th active season at the end of 2022-23. Christian Petersen

Remember afternoons like this one, when McIlroy makes this game look impossibly easy, the next time you’re crushed by one of his opening-round 73s at Augusta. Recall the victories the next time he cries in an interview and you play armchair psychologist. You have your answer for the next time you ask yourself What’s wrong with Rory? Nothing. Nothing at all. Golf is hard, professional golf is harder, and winning is the hardest. He’s now done that 20 times. Instead of focusing on what he’s not, take a tip from Rory and focus on what he is.

“I think part of the emotion at the end of [the Ryder Cup] was to do with that week, but it was also probably to do with the last few months in terms of searching to try to get better and the realization that I don’t need to search for anything. It’s all right here.”

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The clubs Rory McIlroy used to win the 2021 CJ Cup at Summit

Golf Digest Middle East — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 04:40:17 +0000

Christian Petersen

By E. Michael Johnson
Rory McIlroy’s struggles on the first two days of the Ryder Cup were one of the most-talked about takeaways for the European side. But McIlroy took the momentum from his Sunday singles victory over Xander Schauffele and earned his 20th career PGA Tour title and his second in the calendar year—carding a Sunday 66 to earn the victory at the 2021 CJ Cup at The Summit Club.

McIlroy’s 25-under par total—after a Saturday 62—was good enough to edge Collin Morikawa, a member at The Summit Club, by two shots after Morikawa’s final-round 62.

After a triple-bogey 7 on the par-4 17th in the opening round, McIlroy went 40 consecutive holes without a bogey, going 18-under par over that stretch. That run ended on the fourth hole Sunday, but McIlroy recovered nicely from that temporary hiccup with birdies at Nos. 6, 8 and 12 followed by a monstrous 35-footer for eagle from just off the green at the par-5 15th to take command.

It was not the only well-made stroke during the week. In fact, McIlroy, who has struggled with his putting at times (ranked 66th last season, prompting a change to an old Scotty Cameron blade putter at the Olympics), was first in strokes gained/putting, gaining more than seven shots on the field with his TaylorMade Spider X mallet. That putter also came in handy when he missed the green, which he did 18 times, but got up and down 16 of them to lead the field.

Of course, McIlroy is one of the best drivers of the golf ball on the planet, which was on display at Summit where he ranked second in strokes gained/off-the-tee, picking up more than five shots on the field. He also was fourth in driving distance at more than 320 yards per measured drive.

In other words, this was a different McIlroy than the one we saw at the Ryder Cup just a few weeks ago. This was way more like the McIlroy we’re used to seeing on the PGA Tour.

What Rory McIlroy had in the bag at the 2021 CJ Cup
Ball: TaylorMade TP5x
Driver: TaylorMade SIM2 (Fujikura Ventus Black 7x), 9 degrees
3-wood: TaylorMade SIM, 15 degrees
Hybrid: TaylorMade SIM Max, 19 degrees
Irons (3-9): TaylorMade P730; (PW): TaylorMade Milled Grind 3
Wedges: TaylorMade Milled Grind 2 (56, 58 degrees)
Putter: TaylorMade Spider X

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Rickie Fowler offers a pretty blunt assessment of his recent on-course struggles

Golf Digest Middle East — Sat, 16 Oct 2021 23:27:35 +0000

Christian Petersen

By Ryan Herrington
There are 36 holes left in the CJ Cup, too many to do more than merely speculate on how things will play out for Rickie Fowler as he works on building confidence to close out a year that has offered little of it.

The good news: A pair of 66s have the 32-year-old in the top 10 of a PGA Tour event heading into the weekend for the first time in a while. The bad news: He’s six shots off the lead of Keith Mitchell and probably has to go even lower over the next two rounds at The Summit Club to have a chance of winning.

Fowler’s last win on the PGA Tour came at the 2019 Waste Management Phoenix Open. Since then, he’s fallen from eighth in the World Ranking to 128th entering this week. The last time he shot more than two straight rounds in the 60s in a tour event was 14 months ago at the 2020 WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational.

Much has been written about Fowler’s slide, how he failed to qualify for the Masters, the U.S. Open and the FedEx Cup Playoffs for the first time in more than a decade. Less has been said by Fowler about how he’s processing his struggles.

On Friday, Fowler opened up about his mind-set as he’s stumbled along in 2021.

“When you’re in those low points, there’s times when you wonder like am I ever going to be back in that position,” Fowler said. “Obviously, you believe that you can, but there’s those thoughts of like golf is obviously one of the most humbling sports there is and you can never take it for granted.”

It’s not that Fowler hasn’t put in the time and effort to turn things around. Late summer into the fall, he’s worked extensively with coach John Tillery on swing changes that offer hope. “A lot of progress was made, especially over the kind of six, seven weeks that I had off prior to coming to Vegas,” Fowler said.

Still, he missed the cut last week at the Shriners Children’s Open, his first start of the 2021-22 season. Fowler stuck around Sin City over the weekend and visited Butch Harmon, taking away encouragement in what his former instructor had to say about he was seeing.

“I told Butch over the weekend when I was hitting balls with him, when I worked with him, I probably wasn’t as knowledgeable about my swing, but it was simple and I understood what we were trying to do and I knew where we were at and I understood it,” Fowler said. “I feel like now I’m in a similar position, but I’m much more knowledgeable about the golf swing in general as well as mine, so that’s basically where we are.

“It’s definitely been humbling, we’ve been patient, but it’s nice to see some stuff start paying off.”

Of course, there’s more to learn come this weekend, something Fowler is optimistic about.

“Obviously if you look at anyone’s career, everyone’s up and down, no one’s ever held it steady for, you know, a long period of time,” Fowler said. “Tiger’s probably been the most impressive with it as far as when he was good, he was good, and had his little times off. Even I think Jack is probably the one that doesn’t get talked about very much, he had his ups and downs. It’s there, it’s going to happen. … It’s not so much how you deal with when you’re playing well or bad, it’s just more so just kind of staying who you are and not letting it affect you as a person, keep kind of moving forward.”

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How Rory McIlroy accidentally daggered Dustin Johnson

Golf Digest Middle East — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 02:04:39 +0000

Mike Ehrmann
Rory McIlroy put his foot in his mouth in front of Dustin Johnson on Wednesday at the CJ Cup, but proved a point about how tough it is to win on the PGA Tour.

By Ryan Herrington
As Rory McIlroy prepared to play in his first event of the 2021-22 PGA Tour season, the CJ Cup at The Summit Club in Las Vegas, he was asked to assess the one just finished. In the process, the questioner highlighted McIlroy’s victory at the Wells Fargo Championship in May and his seven top-10 finishes.

“Yeah, last season was OK in parts and, you know, thank you for highlighting the good stuff.”

The inflexion in his voice carried with it the knowing tone that there was also some not good stuff. McIlroy struggled to close the door at several events he was in contention, sought the help of a new swing instructor to help with his swing, dropped out of the top 15 in the World Ranking for the first time since 2009 (he’s back to No. 14) and finishing in the top 10 in just one major in 2021.

Suffice it to say, McIlroy is ready to put the “superseason” in the past but does so knowing full well that the PGA Tour the 32-year-old Ulsterman is playing right now has a depth that makes dominant stretches like the one he experienced from August 2012 to September 2014—in which he finished first six times, won three majors and had 22 top-10 finishes in 39 starts—difficult to conjure.

“It’s tough to win, right? I’ve had a couple of seasons where I’ve won four and five times and that’s really … I think nowadays that’s an achievement,” McIlroy said. “The seasons of sort of 10 wins like Vijay [Singh] and Tiger [Woods] obviously multiple times, I don’t know if we’re going to … maybe I’ll be wrong, but I don’t know if we’re going to see them again. I think a really good season nowadays is sort of … three wins is exceptional, two wins is very good, and then anything like above three, you’re the best player in the world at that point.

Looking for another way to show just how deep is the PGA Tour? As McIlroy explained it, he stumbled upon it in embarrassing fashion on Wednesday morning in Las Vegas when he was having breakfast at the same table as Dustin Johnson.

“I said, ‘Oh, are you going to start in Maui [at the Sentry Tournament of Champions] like you usually do?’ He said, ‘I’m not in.’ I was like, ‘Oh, sorry.’ ”

Indeed, while DJ famously has won a PGA Tour event in 14 consecutive seasons, he has not won one in the 2021 calendar year. Without a win in the last few weeks of the fall season, Johnson will miss the event at Kapalua Resort for just the second time since 2009.

“[But] there you go, DJ’s the second-ranked player in the world and he didn’t win on tour [in 2021]. It just shows you how tough it is.”

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