{"id":815864,"date":"2026-08-16T20:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T20:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/815864\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T20:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T20:56:09","slug":"rory-mcilroy-finds-encouragement-in-66th-place-showing-focus-turns-to-bmw-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/815864\/","title":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy finds encouragement in 66th-place showing; focus turns to BMW Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

MEMPHIS, Tenn. \u2013 Back-to-back bogeys to finish his week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship seemed apropos for Rory McIlroy, who struggled to rounds of 74-70-72-72.<\/p>\n

On the bright side, his 66th-place finish was an improvement over his last start at TPC Southwind, a tie for 68th in 2024, when he seemed to sour on the course if not the scorching August conditions.<\/p>\n

The world No. 2 also took solace in the chance to knock off some competitive rust and prepare for the year\u2019s final two events.<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely felt like I found a feel out there that might work on the golf course. I hit some better shots coming in, for sure. Still a few loose ones as well, but five birdies coming in \u2026 there\u2019s some signs of encouragement there,\u201d said McIlroy, who began his final round with a double bogey and played his first six holes in 5 over.<\/p>\n

McIlroy skipped the Memphis event last year and seemed to be poised to bypass the tournament again this year but said he didn\u2019t want to go into the final two playoff events having not played competitive golf since The Open in July.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s likely that he was also motivated to play this week to help smooth over his decision to likely fall one event short of the Tour-mandated minimum of 15 starts. McIlroy told reporters earlier in the week<\/a> that he\u2019d spoken with Tour CEO and commissioner Brian Rolapp about the issue and was confident they could find a solution.<\/p>\n

McIlroy said he planned to fly home to South Florida to work on his swing with his coach, Michael Bannon, before heading to next week\u2019s BMW Championship in St. Louis, Missouri.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, it\u2019s more about obviously the execution of what I\u2019m doing right now, and the execution wasn\u2019t there this week,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m going to have to sort of put the head down and grind from now until Thursday to try to feel like I have any sort of chance next week.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEMPHIS, Tenn. \u2013 Back-to-back bogeys to finish his week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship seemed apropos for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":815865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-815864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815864","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=815864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/815865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}