For a man who often overburdens himself with too many thoughts, Rory McIlroy was clear on one thing in his pre-Open musings on Tuesday – he doesn’t care in the slightest what future generations say about him.
Whether we believe him is perhaps another matter, because McIlroy has often spoken of his desire to leave a legacy behind in his sport.
But as he pursues a seventh major title, the two-time Masters champion was asked, rather morbidly, how he will want to be remembered when he is dead and buried.
‘I don’t really care,’ said McIlroy, 37. ‘I would like to think that the people that love and care about me think a certain way of me, but I’ll be long gone.
‘I’ll be dead. I don’t think I’ll be seeing what people say about me. I’ll be six feet under. I don’t think I’ll be a ghost. Yeah, I don’t care.’
Rory McIlroy was in high spirits on Tuesday at Royal Birkdale ahead of The Open commencing
With that cleared up, the matter at hand for McIlroy will be finishing the major season with a bang on Sunday, just 101 days after it began at Augusta.
Such a condensed schedule, not to mention the wait of almost nine months until the 2027 Masters, seems desperately unnecessary and McIlroy, for one, doesn’t like it.
He said: ‘This major season always feels like it goes quicker and quicker every year.
‘I’d like to see it spread out a little bit longer. It just seems like it’s very, very quick.
‘From a player perspective, if you get on a bit of a run, it’s nice to be sort of playing well and go from one straight into the next.
‘But for the sport as a whole and for the general interest in the game, obviously I can see the positives in that major season being stretched out a little bit longer.
‘There’s a lot of different constituents in the game, a lot of different governing bodies and opinions, and my opinion isn’t going to change anything. I feel like I would certainly voice it, but I don’t think it’s going to really change anything.’
Naturally, McIlroy will start among the favourites this week at Royal Birkdale, where some improved play with his driver in recent starts might bring rewards on a course where an ability to carry the fairway bunkers is a distinct advantage. The scorched rough will certainly offer less deterrent to the bigger hitters.
But McIlroy’s form since his Masters win has been decent yet unspectacular.
McIlroy (pictured) had plenty to say when asked about the make-up of golf’s majors calendar
With finishes of 19th, 7th, 12th, 32nd and 7th in only five starts post-Augusta, there is a question of whether he should have been more active in the past three months.
Rhythm has proven elusive, shown when he berated himself at the Scottish Open on Sunday by calling out after a hooked approach: ‘Oh my god, I’m so bad at golf.’
A couple of days at Birkdale has left the 2014 Open champion confident he has fixed the issues.
‘It depends what hour of the day you get me,’ he said. ‘It’s funny, I felt really good the first two days in Scotland and then felt like my game just sort of deteriorated as the week went on.
‘But I’ve done a good bit of work the past couple days. It’s definitely trending in the right direction.’
