MORE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP COVERAGE HERE<\/a><\/p>\nAt that time, Scheffler was dominating golf at a level not seen since Tiger Woods. And he\u2019s still the No. 1 player by a distance, even if he experienced his first missed cut in four years at the Scottish Open last week.<\/p>\n
Scheffler used the free weekend to make an early arrival at Royal Birkdale and get a look at the course, which has undergone renovation since it last \u200chosted The Open in 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, you never want to have a weekend off, but going into a tournament when you\u2019re defending, there\u2019s always a bit more stuff to do. So it wasn\u2019t the worst thing in the world, albeit it was quite frustrating,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
McIlroy performed better in Scotland, finishing tied for seventh, but his final round might best be remembered not for shooting 64 but for him exclaiming \u201cI\u2019m so bad at golf\u201d after hitting a poor approach on the 16th hole.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though I shot a good score on Sunday, it didn\u2019t feel very good,\u201d McIlroy said.<\/p>\n
Fog delays meant McIlroy played 30 holes on Sunday so he only went on the range on Monday.<\/p>\n
It has been 12 years since McIlroy won his first and so-far-only Open Championship title, just down the northwest English coastline at Hoylake.<\/p>\n
Winning back-to-back Masters titles not only meant he completed the career grand slam, it also ended a major drought of more than a decade.<\/p>\n
That has somewhat taken the pressure off McIlroy at golf\u2019s biggest events but his home major remains special.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt brings me back to my childhood,\u201d the Northern Irishman said.<\/p>\n
As a kid, he could only dream of being a six-time major champion and only the sixth player to win all four majors. This week, a win would see him tied with Harry Vardon as the European player with most majors in men\u2019s golf.<\/p>\n
Not that those records matter to McIlroy, it seems.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it would be a pretty unfulfilling pursuit if you\u2019re just chasing records and chasing results,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to enjoy the process. You have to enjoy the journey to get there. I\u2019ve learned that the hard way at times by chasing results and chasing records too much.\u201d<\/p>\n
MORE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP COVERAGE HERE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy ponders a question about how he\u2019ll be remembered when dead, ahead of The Open. (Photo: EPA)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,375701,755,32895,139396,2503,756,1657,85,1742],"class_list":["post-800842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-birkdale","tag-golf","tag-legacy","tag-majors","tag-open-championship","tag-rory-mcilroy","tag-scottie-scheffler","tag-sports","tag-the-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800842","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=800842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}