{"id":569544,"date":"2026-05-06T16:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T16:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/569544\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T16:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T16:45:07","slug":"rory-mcilroy-back-to-back-masters-champion-more-motivated-than-ever-before-pga-tour-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/569544\/","title":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy: Back-to-back Masters champion &#8216;more motivated than ever&#8217; before PGA Tour return"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rory McIlroy says he is &#8220;more motivated than I&#8217;ve ever been&#8221; as he returns to action for the first time since successfully defending the Masters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The world number two became just the fourth player to win successive Green Jackets <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/golf\/articles\/cgqkgvxgv2xo\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">when he held off Scottie Scheffler<\/a> at Augusta National last month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Last year, Northern Ireland&#8217;s McIlroy became just the sixth man to complete the career Grand Slam with his play-off victory over Justin Rose, and he admits the aftermath of his second Augusta triumph &#8220;feels a lot different&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Even winning felt different,&#8221; McIlroy said before his PGA Tour return at this week&#8217;s Truist Championship.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I guess, you know, and I&#8217;ve spoke about this a lot, I felt like winning the Grand Slam was going to be this life-changing thing and in some ways it was, but in other ways I had to remember like, no, I still have a lot of my career left and I want to keep playing and keep competing. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;So this year was, I think, validation for all the work that I&#8217;ve put in over the last few years to get myself back to this place where I&#8217;m winning majors.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy says he is &#8220;more motivated than I&#8217;ve ever been&#8221; as he returns to action for the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-569544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569544","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=569544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}