I WILL ROR BACK

McIlroy: I don’t need to win... but I really want to. I am just as ambitious now as I was at the start of my career, maybe even more so

AT times, Rory McIlroy sounds like a man trying to convince himself.

A man trying to convince himself he can become the dominant force he threatened to be three years ago,

A man trying to convince himself his desire remains undimmed by riches and past success.

Going into the 146th Open, he is relaxed, for sure. Engaging, eloquent and, as always, honest.

“I want to win this week. I don’t need to win,” McIlroy said.

“A second Open championship isn’t going to change my life, but I want to win.

“Yeah, I’m still as ambitious now as I was starting off my career, if not more so now because I know what I’ve achieved and I know what I can achieve. So it only makes you want to do that even more.

“You get so excited for these tournaments. They’re the biggest and best tournaments in the world and, ultimately, my career is going to be defined by how I do in these tournaments.”

It is almost three years since he won his last Major, the 2014 USPGA title, following his Open win at Hoylake earlier that year.

Heading to Augusta in 2015, McIlroy was gunning for a career Grand Slam and many were predicting a Tiger Woods-style era of superiority.

“Look, when I won those tournaments in ’14 and I was where I was in the game, yeah, of course, I thought, ‘OK, I really can keep this going and I can become…’”

His voice trails off, but you know where he is heading.

He goes on: “I was going into the Masters the next year, thinking, ‘I can win the Grand Slam, I can do this, I can do that’, and some things just come along that you don’t expect, that sort of stop me in my tracks.”

The things he didn’t expect were the ankle injury that disrupted his 2015 season and the rib problem that has blighted this year.

McIlroy, 28, insists he is fighting fit, but, having missed the cut in the US Open and in the Irish and Scottish Opens, he is hardly going into the Championship in peak form. Cue more self-convincing. “I feel like it’s all coming together,” he insisted.

“I’m just waiting for that round or that moment or that week where it sort of clicks and I’ll be off and running. “I’ve had little periods like this before in my career, and I’ve been able to bounce back from them. I’d say I was in worse positions than this.”

McIlroy is still ranked No.4 in the world and many expect him to contend this week.

But, as he settles into married life, there are still those who have doubts about his single-mindedness.

Infamously, of course, Steve Elkington suggested McIlroy looked “bored” at last month’s US Open.

Until he wins another Major, the question of motivation is likely to keep raising its head.

He was happy to address it again on the eve of his opening round alongside Dustin Johnson and Charl Schwartzel and certainly came across as pretty fired-up.

McIlroy said: “If you had asked me in Carnoustie 10 years ago (on his Open debut), ‘You’re going to be sitting in your press conference in 10 years’ time at Birkdale, what would you like to have achieved?’

“And if someone told me, ‘You’re going to be a four-time Major winner and you’ve won The Open, and you’re one leg away from the career Grand Slam, you’ve played on three winning Ryder Cup teams, you’ve won the Order of Merit three times in Europe and you’ve won the FedExCup in the States’, I’d be, like, ‘Yeah, I’ll take that! That’s pretty good’.

“But having had that success, you only want to do that more.

“And you want to emulate that and you want to do it again and again and again.

“So I definitely haven’t lost the hunger that I’ve always had.”

And if he has convinced himself, that might just be half the battle.

A second Open won’t change my life... but my career will be defined by how I do in these tournaments