PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. \u2014 There is a warning sign on the 18th tee box at Pebble Beach that might also serve as a piece of course advice.<\/p>\n
\u201cNO SITTING ON FENCE.\u201d<\/p>\n
The genius of Pebble Beach<\/a> exists in the extremes. Jagged rocks and foreboding surf and enormous dunes and tiny greens. Of the many skills required to thrive here, decisiveness is perhaps the most important. On the 18th tee box and in the winner\u2019s celebration on the 18th green, there is no sitting on the fence.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Rory McIlroy knows this better than most. Anyone with a little bit of golf in their soul understood what McIlroy meant last February, when he suggested that winning at Pebble Beach for the first time meant a little bit more.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a few what I would call cathedrals of golf,\u201d McIlroy said then. \u201cHere, Augusta, St.\u00a0Andrews \u2014 maybe a few more you could add in there.\u00a0 I had a big fat zero on all of those going in here.\u00a0 To knock one off at Pebble is very cool.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, anyone with a little bit of golf in their soul also knows what came after that victory at Pebble Beach: a third-career win at the Players Championship, and then a career-altering, sport-rattling, Grand Slam-clinching<\/a> victory at the Masters.<\/p>\n When the tomes are written, that last victory in Augusta will be remembered as the one that kicked the door down for McIlroy. But it may be said that his first victory of 2025, at Pebble Beach, was the one that broke the lock.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a big historian of the game and I remember all the championships that have been played here,\u201d McIlroy said then, eerily foreshadowing the history he would soon create at Augusta. \u201cAnd to add my name to that list is pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, in 2026, the historian has been sent back into the library. With no further major championships to conquer and no additional road Ryder Cups to win, McIlroy has been forced to reset his goals. And, in doing so, he\u2019s had the opportunity to confront a new question: Which \u201ccathedrals\u201d come next?<\/p>\n On Friday at Pebble Beach, the same day McIlroy shot five under to move into contention heading into the weekend, the Grand Slam winner faced the question himself for the first time.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s places I haven\u2019t won that I would love to,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cSt. Andrews being one of them. Riviera next week would be another. Riviera and Muirfield Village are two. They\u2019re wonderful golf courses but who hosts the events as well. You know, Tiger and Jack. I was able to win Bay Hill but not while Arnie was around, so it would be nice to win both those tournaments while both those guys are alive and kicking.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n And perhaps the biggest outstanding victory on McIlroy\u2019s list? Only the most elusive major championship site in the sport: the home of golf.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of golf courses with a lot of history. There\u2019s a lot of old U.S. Open sites that have had some great things happen at them,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cYeah, this is certainly one, Augusta was another, and the last one I think \u2014 not the last one, but the biggest one on the list would probably be St. Andrews.\u201d<\/p>\n McIlroy will likely have at least one more chance to close out a major victory at the Old Course in the prime of his playing career. That will arrive in 2027, when the golf world returns to St. Andrews for the 155th Open shortly after his 38th birthday.<\/p>\n These are champagne aspirations to be sure, but it would be foolish to discount them as insignificant. As McIlroy learned at Pebble Beach last February (and again at Augusta National in April), breakthroughs often come in multiples.<\/p>\n And when it comes to picking his spots? Well, McIlroy certainly isn\u2019t sitting on the fence.<\/p>\n The post At Pebble Beach, Rory McIlroy confronts a new career question<\/a> appeared first on Golf<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. \u2014 There is a warning sign on the 18th tee box at Pebble Beach that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,55555,6082,218186,99],"class_list":["post-469673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-pebble-beach","tag-rory-mcilroy","tag-sitting-on-the-fence","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}