winning the Players Championship in a playoff over J.J. Spaun<\/a>, McIlroy never shot in the 70s and was never really in contention.<\/p>\nHe teed off early Sunday, double bogeyed his first hole, rebounded to make five birdies but could manage just a final-round 71 that had him hovering around 50th\u00a0place.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t what he would have wanted. But a week ago he withdrew from the Arnold Palmer Invitational with a back issue and now he\u2019s got some decisions to make about how he will prepare for his Masters defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll see,\u201d McIlroy said after the final round at TPC Sawgrass. \u201cI haven\u2019t really made a decision either way. I\u2019ll see how my body feels. We\u2019ll see how I feel in practice and at home and if I get itchy feet at home, maybe add an event at some point.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like it was important to make the weekend here and play an extra couple of days. But yeah, really just see how the next week goes, see how once I get back to actually a full practice schedule and in the gym and stuff like that, see how my body reacts to that, and then I\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n
McIlroy is not in the field for this week\u2019s Valspar Championship. (He didn\u2019t commit to playing Tuesday night at the TGL indoor competition where his team is in the league semifinals.)<\/p>\n
Last year, McIlroy played the Texas Children\u2019s Hospital Open in Houston, where he tied for fifth two weeks prior to the Masters. He could also enter the Texas Valero Open the week prior to the Masters.<\/p>\n
\u201cHappy I got through four days and my body feels good,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cI feel like my game sort of progressively got a little bit better as the week went on, even though the scores probably didn\u2019t reflect it over the weekend. I hit the ball well. I just didn’t make anything on the greens.<\/p>\n
\u201cHappy to come through four rounds and feel like my body held up well. A couple little things to work on, but overall, not the week that I wanted. Just trying to take the positives.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for what the Players Championship portends for the year, McIlroy said it is mixed.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you feel like it tells you stuff, and then other times it sort of doesn\u2019t,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve had bad results here and went on to have a good season, and I\u2019ve had good results here, and the two really good results here I\u2019ve went on to have good seasons. It\u2019s a decent litmus test. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s the best in terms of you telling where your game is at. It can get a little funky if you hit it in some spots.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I would say you have to be really on to shoot scores here. I guess it tells you a lot about that. I feel like I hit the ball well the last three days. I didn\u2019t get a lot out of it. But I do feel like I saw some good signs even though the scores didn\u2019t quite reflect it.\u201d<\/p>\n
More Golf from Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. \u2014 The title defense never really got on track. Not when Rory McIlroy didn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-543157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}