{"id":801773,"date":"2026-07-15T12:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T12:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/801773\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T12:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T12:09:10","slug":"mcilroy-ready-for-royal-birkdale-test-the-154th-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/801773\/","title":{"rendered":"McIlroy ready for Royal Birkdale test | The 154th Open"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI don&#8217;t really care,\u201d he said. \u201cI would like to think that the people that love and care about me think a certain way of me, but I\u2019ll be long gone, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll be seeing what people say about me. I&#8217;ll be six feet under.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt would be a pretty unfulfilling pursuit if you&#8217;re just chasing records and chasing results.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have to enjoy the process. You have to enjoy the journey to get there. I&#8217;ve learned that the hard way at times by chasing results and chasing records too much.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>McIlroy has also learned to embrace the goodwill that comes his way every time he steps on to the course at The Open.<\/p>\n<p>Twelve months ago, he had the weight of a nation on his shoulders. He may not have landed the Claret Jug at Royal Portrush but he dealt with the expectation of a home crowd in a much more composed manner than 2019. The roars that greeted his 56-foot putt for eagle on the 12th in his third round have only just died down.<\/p>\n<p>The \u2018local hero\u2019 tag falls on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theopen.com\/players\/tommy-fleetwood\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tommy Fleetwood<\/a> this time around but McIlroy feels his Ryder Cup teammate is well equipped to handle the pressure.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s a great environment but tough in a way that you just feel the extra expectation on your shoulders, and you feel like you&#8217;re trying to play well for everyone else and not for yourself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is already enough pressure on anyone in this field to play well for themselves, so to add that extra layer on top of that is always pretty difficult.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel like Tommy&#8217;s more level-headed than I am and maybe won&#8217;t fall into that trap like I did in 2019. It always seems like it takes me one go round to get it right.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt will be interesting to see. I&#8217;m playing with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theopen.com\/players\/matt-fitzpatrick\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Matt (Fitzpatrick)<\/a> tomorrow, but I think a lot of those guys are pretty level-headed, and they&#8217;ll go out there and stick to their routines and do their thing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt would be great for them all to have a great week because obviously with England in the World Cup and everything that&#8217;s going on, it would just be an amazing atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI don&#8217;t really care,\u201d he said. \u201cI would like to think that the people that love and care&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":801774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-801773","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\/801773","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=801773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}