Q. Rory, I know you always want to regroup after the end of a long season, but this seems like it was a little bit harder on everybody involved. Would that be fair to say, and how do you regroup?
RORY McILROY: Yeah. My season is not over, obviously. I've still got five events left to play. But yeah, it's been -- 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.
Yeah, I think it was obviously a great season. Hopefully Scottie goes on and finishes this thing off because he deserves it off what a year that he's had.
It's been a long season, and I'm going to just have to think about trying to build in a few extra breaks here and there next year and going forward because I felt like I hit a bit of a wall sort of post-U.S. Open, and still feel a little bit of that hangover.
Q. Is Scottie's consistency the part that you admire most about him, that he's been able to do it three straight seasons?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I think his consistency, his attitude. I feel like he just sort of brings the same demeanor to the course every single day, no matter what position on the leaderboard he's in. He's just amazing to just watch the way he manages himself around the golf course. Yeah, we'll look back on 2024 and it's obviously one of the best individual years that a player has had for a long time.
Q. How many starts will you end up having this year?
RORY McILROY: 27.
Q. And how many is too many do you think?
RORY McILROY: 27. I'm usually sort of like a 22 sort of person. 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.
Q. When you play with Scottie, is there just subtle differences between you two right now? Is there anything you sit there and you go, he's just doing something I'm not?
RORY McILROY: He makes more birdies than I do and he makes less bogeys. That sort of adds up to him being a little bit better right now.
I think the one thing I've always admired about Scottie is the amount of bogey-free rounds he shoots. If you just go back over the last two, three years and you look at how many rounds he shoots that he'll shoot like 4-under par, no bogeys, doesn't look spectacular at all, but it's just so solid, doesn't really put himself out of position. When you don't make a ton of bogeys, the field has got to do something really special to keep up.
Q. You've had some stretches where you make the game look easy, sort of like he does. Can you speak to what that does for you when you're out there, the confidence and how it lifts you above everybody else?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I think golf is such a game of momentum, and when the momentum is going with you and you're making birdies and you're shooting scores in the 60s all the time, all you see are birdies and shooting scores in the 60s. It's like a self-fulfilling sort of thing.
Then when you get it going the wrong way in golf and you're seeing bogeys, all you see is bogeys and you're shooting in the 70s and you're struggling -- I think at the peak of his powers, his confidence is as high as it ever has been, and it's a pretty nice feeling to have on the golf course.
Q. I know you said you like this golf course; do you think it'll be appreciably better next year once it's had a chance to grow in a little bit?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I think we're going to have a chance to maybe fire at a few more pins or to hold some greens. I missed the green short on 18 today sort of purposely, and I saw I was like 53 feet from the hole, and I was the closest to the pin of the day.
Yeah, the golf course is just a little young this year, but in a year's time, I think it'll have bedded in and it'll play a little better.
But the scoring has still been incredibly good this year. It just goes to show how adaptable we are all are out here, and once we sort of figure out a golf course and how to play it, we can still shoot low scores.
Q. Do you think you have any duties coming up with the TOUR with the transaction committee or is that on hold for a while with you?
RORY McILROY: Not that I've heard of. Yeah, no, so I -- I could look at my phone and have an email saying there's a call next week. But yeah, not as of yet, no.
Q. It's true there hasn't been one for you guys for a while, right?
RORY McILROY: Not for us. Look, the lawyers have been talking a lot, and I think just the complexity of this deal from a legal standpoint is something that -- obviously we have nothing to add in that regard, so there's no point in us being on those calls.
Q. A quiet fall?
RORY McILROY: Again, I've got a lot of travel and five tournaments to play, so not quiet but maybe quiet on that front, yeah.
Q. The one with your dad, are you looking forward to that?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, we've played the Dunhill a bunch. It's always his birthday that week. Love St Andrews. Yeah, it's always a really cool week.
Q. Shane is going to Europe, playing three weeks, not five, but he says immediately his focus is looking ahead to next year's Ryder Cup. When do you start thinking about that, and do you have that same mindset as that's the biggest thing in 2025?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I think once Rickie gave Tommy that putt on the 16th with green I started thinking about Bethpage.
Yeah, look, the qualifying started in Europe, and we're all trying to get points on the board early to make sure that we don't have to rely on a pick. I think that's obviously the big thing.
I think one of the great things that we did leading up to Rome is we basically had -- pretty much had the team set a few months in advance, so hopefully we can do the same thing again and know the 12 that we're bringing to New York pretty early so we can, I guess, think about pairings, think about all of those things that you need to so that once we get there a few weeks out, we're prepared and everyone knows what they're doing.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports