Keegan Bradley had refused to condemn<\/a> the \u201cpassionate\u201d home fans at Bethpage, where McIlroy felt the hostile atmosphere had actually spurred Europe on.<\/p>\n\u201cI take it as a compliment that they targeted me, but then at the same time, it was a tough week,\u201d McIlroy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat made us better as a team. It galvanised us and it really put our arms around each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Masters champion McIlroy is aiming to cap a memorable year as he prepares for the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think back to the start in January of 2025 when I was last here and everything that\u2019s happened since,\u201d said McIlroy, who also won the Players Championship, the Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the Irish Open.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, in my wildest dreams, I didn\u2019t know. I mean, I knew a year like this was possible, but it has just been an amazing 10 months.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, McIlroy reflected on the recent change by LIV Golf to go from three rounds to 72 holes to align with golf\u2019s traditional four rounds \u2013 in an effort to be recognised by World Golf Ranking.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a peculiar move, because I think they could have got ranking points with three rounds. I don\u2019t think three rounds versus four rounds is what was holding them back,\u201d McIlroy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt certainly puts them more in line with traditional golf tournaments than what we\u2019ve all done. It brings them back into not really being a destructor and sort of is falling more in line with what everyone else does.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause their strength of fields are going to be so weak, because a lot of the guys have fallen already in the rankings because they have not had ranking points for so long, I don\u2019t know if the ranking points are really going to benefit them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI got a lovely e-mail from Derek Sprague apologising,\u201d McIlroy told BBC Sport as he prepared for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-248060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}