It’s been 16 months since Rory McIlroy last won a professional event, but the former world No 1 believes the best is yet to come in his career.
Despite boasting a record of four Major triumphs and 18 PGA Tour titles, McIlroy’s recent struggles have raised concerns among certain sections of the golfing fraternity.
The Northern Irishman will still go into Thursday’s PLAYERS Championship as the defending champion after last year’s event was called off during round one due to Covid-19.
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‘I’ve talked about this before; you have to be an eternal optimist in this game, and I truly believe that my best days are ahead of me, and you have to believe that,’ McIlroy said at TPC Sawgrass on Tuesday.
‘There’s no point in me being out here if I didn’t think that. That’s just not part of my psyche or anyone’s psyche out here. I think that’s the difference between people that make it to the elite level and the people that don’t, because they don’t think that way. I certainly believe that my best days are ahead of me, and I’m working hard to make sure that they are.’
Another Sunday slump last week had him fall out of favour at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, where he settled for a T10 finish.
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McIlroy looked poised to make a final-round push against Lee Westwood and Bryson DeChambeau, but instead struggled throughout his round, citing a problem in his swing as the reason.
‘This feeling that I have at the minute, I’m not used to managing it, so that’s where the two-way miss comes in, and that’s where I just have to figure out what to do to get it back to a familiar pattern.
‘The good stuff is there. It always will be. I’ll always be able to figure it out and find a way. But it’s when it goes slightly off, how do you manage that,’ McIlroy explained.
