Rory McIlroy said he will keep choosing his PGA Tour starts under the circuit’s new-look schedule, saying the lighter approach brings balance to his life even if it makes the season-long title race tougher to win.
The six-time major winner has played only two tournaments since retaining his Masters title in April, and he returned this week at the Memorial Tournament as the tour begins to move toward a future with more signature events, 120-player fields and promotion-and-relegation ideas between tiers. McIlroy’s answer was plain: he is comfortable making the FedExCup chase harder for himself if it leaves room for life away from golf.
“I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve been on tour more than half of my life at this point,” he said. “So I’ll pick and choose my spots like I have been doing sort of the last 18 months to two years.” He also joked that he feels like “a part-timer” these days, a nod to how selectively he has been building his schedule as the tour tries to reward its biggest names with a revamped calendar.
That selectivity has already shaped the events he has missed. McIlroy skipped the Memorial last year for the first time since 2017 and also sat out two signature tournaments, The Sentry and RBC Heritage. He finished tied seventh at the US PGA Championship before taking time off, then came back at Muirfield Village knowing he has still not found the tournament that matters most to him there.
“I would say here and Tiger’s event at Riviera, they’re the two that I would love to win,” McIlroy said, referring to the Genesis Invitational. “I’ve been lucky enough to win at Bay Hill, but not while Arnold [Palmer] was alive. So I always thought it would be cool to win here and take that little walk up the hill off the 18th green and shake Jack’s hand.” He added that he and Jack Nicklaus have “known each other now for nearly 20 years,” and said the Memorial is “certainly one I would love to get done.”
The gap between what McIlroy wants and what he is willing to play is where this story lives. The PGA Tour’s new structure is meant to make its top events more valuable, but McIlroy is openly saying he would rather protect balance than chase every available start. That trade-off matters because the 37-year-old is one of the few players whose choices can still shape the feel of a season, not just his own.
He is not finished adding to the list of places he wants to attack. Earlier this week, McIlroy scouted the US Open course at Shinnecock Hills, where he missed the cut in 2018, and he said the fairways are “more generous than they were in 2018” even if the first cut of rough is five inches long. He will be back there this month, carrying a lighter schedule, a longer memory of what happened last time and the same willingness to leave some tournaments on the table.
