McIlory’s busy year has been marked by exciting highs and crushing lows.
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forgive Rory McIlroy if his 2024 season has felt like a blur.
In a whirlwind campaign that began in January with a win at Dubai desert classicthe Northern Irishman has maintained a busy schedule that will see him compete in 27 tournaments by the end of the year. While his busy calendar has allowed for little respite, it has given McIlroy a chance to rethink how he goes about his business.
In the future, he plans to slow it down a bit.
“I’m going to try to cut it down to 18 or 20 (events) a year going forward, I think,” he said.
McIlroy’s comments came in the wake of Championship tournamentin Atlanta, where he shot a final-round 66 to finish in a tie for ninth. The event was McIlroy’s fourth in the past five weeks, including the Paris Olympics, and his season is far from over. He still has five more tournaments in his book.
“I feel like the tournaments came thick and fast, and obviously with the Olympics again this year, it kind of condensed everything.”
McIlroy’s year has been a roller coaster of emotional ups and downs. Along with Dubai, his highlights included a victory at the Wells Fargo Championship in May, where he chased down Xander Schauffele on Sunday for the title. But the bitterest moment of his 2024 campaign came a month later with a devastating loss at the US Open at Pinehurst, where McIlroy stumbles down the stretch made way for Bryson Dechambeau’s heroics.
In Atlanta, McIlroy admitted the effects of that loss still linger.
“I felt like I hit a bit of a wall after the US Open, and I still feel a little bit of that hangover,” he said.
At the dawn of his career, before marriage and fatherhood, among other obligations, McIlroy said he was better suited to a good schedule. But a year with 27 tournaments is now too much.
“I’m usually like a 22-year-old,” McIlroy said. “But then again, I was kind of in my 20s then and I didn’t have the responsibilities that I do now.”
At 35, he’s ready to make a comeback. But he can’t yet. He will be back in action next week at the Irish Open, at Royal County Down and again at the Alfred Dunhill Links in St. Andrews, in October.
“It’s been a long season,” McIlroy said, “and I’ll just have to think about trying to build a few extra breaks here and there next year and moving forward.”
