Rory McIlroy feels reverting back to his “trusty irons” can help build towards another successful campaign as he prepares to defend the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am title.<\/p>\n
Masters champion McIlroy heads into his first PGA Tour event of the year having ditched the experiment of switching from blade to cavity-back irons, which saw him finish third at the Dubai Invitational but then down the field in tied for 33rd place at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic.<\/p>\n
The Northern Irishman revealed he had decided not to move forwards with the new equipment as he looks to make an impact again at the signature tournament in California.<\/p>\n
“I had a strong finish to the season last year, played well in the Middle East, went on to Australia, which was a great experience, sort of messed around with some different iron set-ups and sort of messed around with like a different ball and a few equipment changes,” McIlroy said at a press conference.<\/p>\n
“That experiment is over \u2013 back to the trusty irons that I have played basically my whole career. (My) game feels in good shape.<\/p>\n
“I had two weeks in Dubai to sort of shake the rust off, played OK, wasn’t anything spectacular, but I have had two nice weeks at home and done some practice. I feel pretty good coming in here.”<\/p>\n
After winning at Pebble Beach, McIlroy went on to claim a second Players Championship before completing the career Grand Slam with a memorable play-off win over Justin Rose at Augusta.<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old hopes another positive showing this weekend can give him a sense of momentum for the challenges ahead.<\/p>\n
“It was a perfect way to start the year here last year, (so I am) hoping for something similar this week,” he said.<\/p>\n
The Pebble Beach Pro-Am features a limited field of 80 and is the PGA Tour\u2019s first ‘Signature Event\u2019 of the season.<\/p>\n
World number one Scottie Scheffler is set to head the field, while early FedExCup leader Chris Gotterup will be looking to build on his play-off win at the Phoenix Open and Rose heads to Pebble Beach having won the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in a record 23-under-par.<\/p>\n
McIlroy was, meanwhile, asked for his views on whether there was a case for the Players Championship to become a fifth major.<\/p>\n
“I think the Players is one of the best golf tournaments in the world, I don\u2019t think anyone disputes that or argues that,” said McIlroy.<\/p>\n
“Player perspective it\u2019s amazing. I think from an on-site fan experience it\u2019s amazing. It\u2019s an amazing golf course, location, venue.<\/p>\n
“But I\u2019m a traditionalist, I\u2019m a historian of the game. We have four major championships.<\/p>\n
“If you want to see what five major championships looks like, look at the women\u2019s game. I don\u2019t know how well that\u2019s went for them.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy feels reverting back to his “trusty irons” can help build towards another successful campaign as he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-293050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}