Rory: I can win six times this season

ABUOYANT Rory McIlroy is convinced he is on course to deliver one of those seasons where he wins five or six tournaments.

The Northern Irishman has returned to the scene of his last victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational with the best stroke average on tour this year and a record of four top-five finishes from four starts.

‘I realise it’s now 12 months since my last win, but I believe I am doing all the right things to get back to those five-win or sixwin seasons,’ he said.

‘At the moment it seems like there’s always one or two people play better than me in any week but there’s nothing to get frustrated about if you’re playing well yourself.

‘Every tournament I’ve played so far this year I’ve left with a smile on my face because I’ve felt like my game is where I want it to be.’

There have been times in the past where McIlroy has added tournaments before the Masters because he’s unhappy with his game. Not this time, with another assault at the career Grand Slam only five weeks away.

‘I couldn’t be happier with my game right now, and if it’s like this in another month, that’ll do for me,’ he said. ‘This is the most comfortable I’ve felt in quite a while. There have been spells of good golf but right now it feels a lot more natural.’

As for the season’s first major, McIlroy had an erudite answer for his American audience when asked whether he was getting impatient at having not completed the Grand Slam in four attempts.

‘Let’s not forget how many elections Abraham Lincoln lost, and he wound up being the President of the United States,’ he said. For the record, Lincoln lost eight.

‘It’s definitely taken me time to come to terms with the things I’ve needed to deal with inside my own head and I think sometimes I’m too much of a fan of the game because I know exactly who has won the grand slam and exactly who I’d be putting myself alongside,’ McIlroy added.

‘There’s maybe a part of that if I didn’t know the history of the game and wasn’t such a fan it would work in my favour, but that’s not me.

‘It would be a massive achievement, it would be huge but I can’t think about it in that way. I just have to go out and play the golf course the way I know I can play it and repeat that for four days and hopefully that’s good enough to have the lowest score that week.

‘I’ve become a lot more comfortable with the fact that I’m going to fail more times than I succeed at that certain conquest or whatever you want to call it.’

McIlroy claimed this tournament last year with a sensational finish featuring six birdies in his last seven holes.

By his side that day was Justin Rose, who will be playing for the first time since he won in San Diego a month ago, and a little cheesed off at being replaced at the top of the world rankings by Dustin Johnson by one thousandth of one point.

Rose needs a top-17 finish here to reclaim top spot and said:’It’s extra motivation, for sure. I like being world No1.’

I couldn’t be happier with my game now