By Christopher Powers
After posting a final round three-under 68 to finish T-22 at the PGA Championship, Rory McIlroy left his FedEx Cup Playoffs availability up in the air, suggesting his lingering rib injury was not fully healed.

Whether or not he is 100% healthy remains unclear, but according to a report from James Corrigan of the UK Telegraph, a member of McIlroy’s management team confirmed he will play in the Northern Trust in Old Westbury, N.Y., next week. The report also confirmed that McIlroy’s good friend Harry Diamond will be back on the bag at the Glen Oaks Club.

When the Northern Irishman tees it up next Thursday, he’ll be defending his FedEx Cup crown, which he won after capturing the second and final legs of the playoffs one year ago.

He comes into the final stretch in a similar situation he found himself in a season ago, having not won an event prior to the playoffs. He’s still put together a respectable season, with six top-10s, eight top-25s and over $2.3 million in total earnings.

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Steven Connolly had the brilliant idea of dubbing over a McIlroy press conference from last week’s PGA Championship in which Rory answered questions about his next bag man following the firing of longtime looper J.P. Fitzgeraled. Instead of giving serious answers like McIlroy did, Connolly came up with his own, um, creative set of criteria. And the phrase “spot on” doesn’t even do the video justice. See it, an more importantly, hear it for yourself:

The entire two-minute clip is brilliant, but a few lines stand out. Like:

“If I tell you a joke on the golf course, I expect you to laugh. I tell jokes for a laugh, and if I don’t get a laugh then I’m just telling a story. And I don’t like stories, I like jokes.”

Fair enough. Who hasn’t force a laugh to please the boss? And. . .

“Always pack me a Twix in the bag, and not a fun size or a snack size, but a regular one.”

Can’t argue with that. The small ones just don’t get the job done.

And in case you’re wondering, this guy isn’t a one-trick pony. The Dublin-based Connolly also pulls off Padraig Harrington in this imagined phone call from Sergio Garcia after the two reportedly patched things up at Rory McIlroy’s wedding:

And he does a mean Graeme McDowell in this video that hawks a fictitious piece of golf apparel called “The G-Mac G-String”:

Keep the impressions coming, Steven. And to Rory’s potential next caddies, better start brushing up on your bedtime stories.

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“I still consider J.P. one of my best friends, one of my closest friends, but sometimes to preserve a personal relationship, you might have to sacrifice a professional one, and that was sort of the decision that I came to in the end,” McIlroy said during a press conference at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone Country Club. “I was getting very hard on him on the golf course and I didn’t want to treat someone that – I don’t want to treat anyone like that. But sometimes this game drives you to that, but I felt like it was the right thing to do, and I don’t think there was any good time to do it.”

McIlroy phoned Fitzgerald last Tuesday with the news that he was making the change – two days after finishing T4 in The Open at Royal Birkdale following an awful start in which the Ulsterman bogeyed five of the first six holes of the championship. It was a pep talk from Fitzgerald that helped McIlroy make a remarkable turnaround and get in contention the final day, but that wasn’t enough to help Fitzgerald preserve a job he has had since 2008.

The split of McIlroy and Fitzgerald was the second high-profile team to dissolve this summer, following the break-up of Phil Mickelson and Jim “Bones” Mackay after the U.S. Open after a 25-year run.

McIlroy first picked up Fitzgerald after the 2008 U.S. Open when Fitzgerald stopped working with Ernie Els.

He admitted to being surprised that they remained a team for more than nine years, considering they missed the cut in their first three events together. But with Fitzgerald on the bag, McIlroy won four major titles, including back-to-back in the British Open and PGA Championship in 2014. Sandwiched in between a victory here at Firestone’s South Course. Currently, No. 4 in the world, McIlroy held the No. 1 spot for 95 weeks.

“I think we did as well as we could. We maybe could have won a couple of more times and we probably want a couple of rounds back that got away from us,” said McIlroy, who refrained from specifics, but probably would list the final round of the 2011 Masters as their nadir when McIlroy crashed to an 80. He won the U.S. Open in record fashion two months later at Congressional, but McIlroy still needs a green jacket to complete the career grand slam.

McIlroy, 28, has turned to childhood friend Harry Diamond to caddie for him the next few weeks, though it remains to be seen if Diamond, a fine golfer in his own right, having played with McIlroy on the youth team in Northern Ireland, is nothing more than a stop-gap selection before McIlroy turns to a more proven commodity.

In the meantime, McIlroy, who has been hampered by a rib injury for much of the year, said he is enjoying doing more of the legwork and computations on his yardages. It’s of a piece with the decision, in which he explained that he wanted to “take more ownership of his game.”

The split with Fitzgerald was amicable enough, however, that McIlroy wouldn’t rule out rehiring him.

“There’s nothing to say that J.P. mightn’t work for me again at some point, but right now I just felt like I needed a little bit of a change,” McIlroy added. “I hate the term fired or sacked or axed, because that’s definitely not what it was. I just changed my path a little bit, but maybe in the future that path might come back to where it was. Right now I just needed to mix things up a little bit, and J.P. understood that and we’re still all good.”

But who will give him that pep talk at the crucial time, he was asked?

“Hopefully,” McIlroy said with a grin, “I won’t need it.”

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According to the Telegraph, McIlroy has tabbed friend and businessman Harry Diamond to be on the bag this week in Akron at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. Diamond is also expected to be with McIlroy at next week’s PGA Championship at Quail Hollow. While sources say it’s a temporary move, others have speculated the pairing could last longer depending on the performance of the next two weeks.

Diamond is a childhood friend of McIlroy’s, playing on the same Ulster youth team and going on to represent the Irish senior team. He was reportedly McIlroy’s best man at his recent wedding.

RELATED: Why Rory McIlroy’s caddy switch is something we should have seen coming

He’s also been on McIlroy’s bag in the past, once at the 2005 Irish Open when Rory was an amateur and again during McIlroy’s rookie season.

The Telegraph notes that McIlroy’s split from Fitzgerald — who gained notoriety during the Open Championship for delivering an in-round pep talk to McIlroy — may possibly stem from a wrong club selection during the tournament’s final round, one that ultimately led to a double bogey.

McIlroy is scheduled to speak to the media on Wednesday at Firestone C.C. Though he hasn’t won since last fall’s Tour Championship, Rory is one of the favorites at the PGA Championship, thanks to two wins, a runner-up and six top-10 finishes in seven appearances at Quail Hollow’s Wells Fargo Championship.

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