{"id":438074,"date":"2026-05-12T15:34:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T15:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/438074\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T15:34:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T15:34:15","slug":"rested-rory-mcilroy-finding-right-headspace-to-win-more-majors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/438074\/","title":{"rendered":"Rested Rory McIlroy Finding Right Headspace to Win More Majors"},"content":{"rendered":"

After successfully defending his title at the 2026 Masters Tournament \u2013 where he completed the career Grand Slam in 2025 \u2013 Rory McIlroy comes to Aronimink this week in a better headspace for the 108th PGA Championship than he did a year ago.<\/p>\n

McIlroy\u2019s lone start since his latest Masters win was just last week in the Truist Championship at Quail Hollow, where he finished T19.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a much more condensed schedule than it used to be,\u201d McIlroy said on Tuesday morning. \u201cWe used to go from April to the end of August. It’s now April to the middle of July. So it’s condensed, and you have to — I think that’s why I need to — especially after the last couple of years, I need to take the time after the Masters to reset and decompress and get myself in the right mental space again to get myself up for this tournament and keep going for the U.S. Open and The Open Championship.\u201d<\/p>\n

McIlroy explained that he went into the 2025 PGA Championship with uncertainty about his immediate future. That\u2019s because of the gravity that came with chasing \u2013 and then achieving \u2013 the career grand slam at Augusta National.<\/p>\n

After accomplishing such a monumental feat, joining just five others in the long history of men\u2019s golf, he hadn\u2019t reset goals, \u201cor found whatever that motivation was to keep going or go forward and set myself goals for the rest of my career. It probably took me a good few months to get to that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The 37-year-old, 30-time PGA TOUR winner has that figured out now.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I’ve said, like last week, coming into this tournament feels a lot different than what it did last year,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cI feel like I’ve got some nice clear road ahead to try to get some more of these majors.\u201d<\/p>\n

The six-time major winner, who counts two PGA Championships (2012 and 2014) on that list, said that from what he\u2019s seen at Aronimink, players can be aggressive off the tees.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like the style of golf,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cI like the bunkering. There’s a lot of bunkers. I think it provides quite a nice bit of variety with shorter par-4s, a couple of longer par-4s. The par-3s, there’s three pretty long ones and a shorter one. I think in this day and age I’m not sure if it’s going to test all aspects of your bag. There’s going to be a lot of — again, as I said, strategy off the tee is pretty nonexistent. It’s, basically, bash driver down there and then figure it out from there, which I think is a lot of these newer — newly renovated — I think about Oak Hill in 2023, here. When these traditional golf courses take a lot of trees out, it makes strategy not as much of a concern off the tee.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Aronimink<\/p>\n

That may be the case off the green, but McIlroy knows it won\u2019t be the case for the greens. With a week expected to be mostly dry, a lot more thought will need to be given to shots into greens.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe greens are the main focus this week, and I think getting yourself in the right sections of the greens, making sure you leave yourself below the hole for the most part,\u201d he said. \u201cThat’s the key this week. Again, I’ve only played four competitive rounds here. I don’t know the place that well to give you a great answer on what I like about it, but Philadelphia’s a wonderful golfing city, a lot of great golf courses, and this is certainly one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"2026<\/p>\n

While there hasn\u2019t been much tournament golf for McIlroy since the Masters, he\u2019s still been keeping a busy schedule. There was no NYC media tour following this year\u2019s Masters victory, but he did take a trip to New York with his wife.<\/p>\n

McIlroy also attended the State Dinner at the White House on April 28 and made a cameo in The Devil Wears Prada 2, released in theaters on May 1.<\/p>\n

About the cameo\u2026 After winning the 2025 Players Championship, McIlroy was asked what he did to prepare for the final round. He said he had dinner, then watched The Devil Wears Prada when he got back to his room.<\/p>\n

David Frankel, the movie\u2019s director, heard about it and asked McIlroy to make a cameo. So, he did.<\/p>\n

\u201cPretty good,\u201d McIlroy laughed. \u201cI know how fortunate I am and so lucky to be in this position in life, and sometimes you have to enjoy the perks because I know that this isn’t going to last forever. There’s going to be a day where I’m not sitting up here and I’m not competing for major championships and I’m not doing what I’m doing. So I guess while I’m doing it, I have to enjoy it, as well. Yeah, it’s been amazing, but there’s still a lot of things I want to achieve. But if I can enjoy it along the way, that’s a nice thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After successfully defending his title at the 2026 Masters Tournament \u2013 where he completed the career Grand Slam…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-438074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}