Rory McIlroy has a chance to finish the season as the top player on the European tour for the sixth time with a win at the Abu Dhabi Championship this week. He will try to do so with a new swing.
McIlroy, who is ranked No. 3 in the world, said he spent three weeks locked away in a studio — first in Florida and then in New York — just hitting balls at a screen with a modified swing. He didn’t even look at the flight of the shots.
He’s been unhappy with the shape of his swing for a while, he said on Wednesday, and wanted to make it stronger so it could hold up under pressure.
This comes after several missed opportunities this season, including at the U.S. Open in June, where he missed two short putts in the final three holes on Sunday. Those mistakes helped Bryson DeChambeau win, and extended McIlroy’s decade-long wait for a major title.
“The only way I was going to make a change, or at least move in the right direction, with my swing was to lock myself in a studio and not see the ball flight for a bit and just focus entirely on the movement,” McIlroy said.
He added, “It’s something just to make my golf swing more efficient, and then if it is more efficient, then it means it’s not going to break down as much under pressure. If I look at my year, the one thing that I would criticize myself on is the fact that I’ve had these chances to win.”
McIlroy has won twice this year — at the Dubai Desert Classic and the Wells Fargo Championship — and finished second four times, including at the Irish Open and the BMW PGA Championship on the European tour.
This has left McIlroy frustrated, but he’s still comfortably ahead in the Race to Dubai rankings, which determine the best player of the year on the European tour.
A win in Abu Dhabi would secure the title and take away some of the suspense for McIlroy heading into the final event of the season, the World Tour Championship in Dubai next week.
“If I go out and win this week, obviously you know, it makes it a bit boring next week,” said McIlroy, a four-time major champion. “But I won’t find it boring. It will be lovely.”
Winning a sixth Race to Dubai title would tie McIlroy with the late Seve Ballesteros on the all-time list, and leave him just two behind Colin Montgomerie, who holds the record with eight.
“I’m a European player,” McIlroy said. “I would like to go down as the most successful European of all time. Obviously Race to Dubai wins would count to that but also major championships and hopefully I’ve got a few more Ryder Cups ahead of me as well.
“So that’s something that I would like to (do). I think (it) is a goal that’s quite attainable over the next 10 years.”
