GOLDEN AGE STILL TO COME
McIlroy wants to emulate Tiger by playing at top level in his 40s
RORY McILROY launches his new season today, declaring his long-term intention to join golf’s greybeard champions club.
McIlroy, who recorded his first professional tournament victory as a teenager, is aiming to go on and emulate the durability of Lee Westwood, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods who all won in their mid-40s.
The Northern Irishman will tee it up at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship viewing 2021 as barely the mid-point of his top-level career.
“It’s funny, when I came to Abu Dhabi as an 18-year-old in my first year on the European Tour, I honestly really couldn’t see myself at that point playing past 40,” said McIlroy.
“I’m 31 now and that doesn’t seem like that far away. I still feel like I have a good 15 years left in me.
“If I’m competitive and can still play, I can see myself doing what the likes of Lee and Tiger and Phil have done over the past couple of years. Phil won on the PGA Tour at 48 years old.”
Fitness will play a key part in McIlroy’s aspirations, as Woods will testify. A fifth back operation just before Christmas means a delayed start to the 15-time Major champion’s year although McIlroy expects to see him back on the course in the spring.
“It was small procedure,” said McIlroy. “Obviously any time you’re being cut into, you try to avoid that as much as you can but he was back on his feet the next day so I don’t think we can read too much into it.
“They were just trying to a clean up a couple of little bits. He won’t be playing for the next couple of months but should be back for the Masters, if not before that.
“He won the Masters with four back surgeries, so there’s not much he can’t do.” McIlroy’s primary aim will revolve around Augusta in April and the career Grand Slam but he wants a win before then after drawing a blank in 2020. Abu Dhabi, where he has
finished in the top three seven times, starts a run of seven appearances in eight weeks.
“That last win does feel like a long time ago,” said McIlroy.
He has been working on his approach play out of the rough and admits this may surprise some of his rivals.
“Who drops a bag of balls in the rough and starts hitting shots? You go to the range and hit off a perfectly manicured piece of turf. But that’s not what you’re always doing on the course,” he said.
“I hit 60 per cent of fairways so 40 per cent of the time I’m hitting out of the rough and my performance out of the rough last year was way down on the previous
year.”
My last win feels a long time ago