Mcilroy has no chance of ‘carefree golf’. Read Breaking the Ice.

‘Carefree’ golf is Rory Mcilroy’s aim for 2020. Good luck with that, Rory!

Maybe a better way of putting it would be he wants to get as close to playing carefree golf as he can. Because it really is impossible. I would reckon the last time he would have been able to do that would have been as a young boy.

From my own experience there is no such thing as a curling match that doesn’t carry any pressure whatsoever.

Clearly, there’s a scale of pressure, with the Olympics right at the top.

But even when I’ve gone back to having a ‘fun’ game in Perth in a local league, it’s not without any pressure at all.

You never stop feeling that a shot matters, especially when there’s an audience, even if it’s a crowd of one.

In Rory’s case, I’m not surprised he (or any golfer) would start out the year and say this sort of thing.

It’s exactly what a sports psychologist will tell you.

Who wouldn’t aspire to perform with the shackles off?

But we all know that the big career goal for him is completing the grand slam by winning the Masters.

And if he’s in contention on the final nine on the Sunday at Augusta, I suspect he won’t be carefree.

Coaching developments

It’s nice to be back home after the coldest trip to Canada I can remember.

I can’t really complain about the curling, though.

The Continental Cup went about as well as I could have hoped.

We lifted the trophy and our team members all played really well.

I thought we deserved a bit better than we got in the grand slam event last week.

We were still playing to a high level and losing a couple of games in the last end was hard to take.

There’s a bit of news on the coaching front. Kristian Lindstrom was out in Canada with us.

Kristian used to play with Team Edin from Sweden.

He’s a young up-and-coming coach with a lot of knowledge in the sport.

We’ve had a few coaches now, Nancy Murdoch was the last one, and we felt this was the right time to try something new.

There’s a new performance director for curling, Nigel Holl, and we’ve been really grateful that he’s included us in the process this time.

It’s a short-term appointment just now but the early signs are good and hopefully that will continue.

Picture: AP. Rory Mcilroy, of Northern Ireland, in action.