Rory McIlroy aims to cut as many as nine events in 2025
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Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland during the final round of the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club, where he finished in a tie for ninth.
PHOTO: AFP
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ATLANTA – Rory McIlroy admitted that a busy schedule had him crawling to the finishing line in 2024 and said that he might reduce his commitments next season by as many as nine tournaments.
“I feel like the tournaments came thick and fast, and obviously with the Olympics thrown in there as well this year, it sort of condensed everything a bit,” said the Northern Irishman, who finished in a tie for ninth at the season-ending Tour Championship in Atlanta on Sept 1.
Despite the admittedly exhausting season, the four-time Major winner still ended with a flourish, shooting a five-under 66 in the final round.
The 35-year-old finished at 16-under 272 for the tournament, tied with Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama and Ireland’s Shane Lowry, his pal.
“It’s been a long season, and I’m going to have to think about trying to build in a few extra breaks here and there next year because I felt like I hit a bit of a wall post-US Open, and still feel a little bit of that hangover,” he added.
McIlroy has won the Tour Championship three times, most recently in 2022 when he held off Scottie Scheffler and South Korea’s Im Sung-jae by a stroke.
World No. 1 Scheffler won the latest edition at East Lake Golf Club by four strokes over Collin Morikawa.
McIlroy said he still has five events planned for the fall and will look towards eliminating events for the 2025 season that begins on Jan 2 with The Sentry at Kapalua, Maui, in Hawaii.
A 26-time winner on the PGA Tour, he won just two PGA events this season – the Zurich Classic of New Orleans with Lowry as his partner in April, and the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte, North Carolina, by five strokes over Xander Schauffele in May.
He also had one victory on the European Tour, taking the Dubai Desert Classic by a stroke in January.
There was a runner-up finish at the US Open as well and seven top-10 PGA Tour finishes, while he earned US$10.9 million (S$14.2 million) in official prize money.
In total, McIlroy said he had 27 events scheduled in 2024, with 19 of those on the PGA Tour.
After finishing a disappointing second at the US Open in June, he did have three top-10 finishes to close out the season.
But his “hangover” saw him miss the cut at the British Open in July and finish tied for 68th at the St Jude Championship in August.
“I’m usually sort of like a 22 (tournament) sort of person,” added McIlroy, whose last Major win was all the way back in 2014 at the PGA Championship.
“But again, that was when I was sort of in my 20s and didn’t have the responsibilities that I do now. I’m going to try to cut it back to like 18 or 20 a year going forward, I think.” REUTERS
