THE MODERATOR: We would like to welcome Rory McIlroy to the interview room here at The Memorial Tournament Presented By Workday. Rory, you've had a couple weeks off since the PGA Championship. What have you been up to and how excited are you to get back in competition?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I feel a bit like a part-timer these days. But, yeah, no, I had a couple weeks off. We got ourselves settled into our house in London for the summer. So it was nice to be over there for sort of like the last 10 days.
Yeah, a little bit of practice. Stopped off at Shinnecock on the way to here on Monday. Scouted it a little bit and played. So, yeah, excited I'm for a good tournament here. I missed this one last year. It's good to be back. So the course is as hard as ever, so looking forward to the challenge this week.
THE MODERATOR: This tournament in general, it's the 50th anniversary. It's your 14th appearance here at Muirfield Village. What is it about coming back to this place and the special nature of it given Jack's connection?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, Jack being the host and everything else that comes along with this tournament, the golf course, the wonderful work they do for the local community here as well. So, yeah, it's a wonderful tournament. Obviously a great list of champions on a wonderful golf course. I haven't quite figured it out yet. It's frustrated me over my career. But hopefully this is the week that I put it all together.
THE MODERATOR: All right. Start taking questions.
Q. Obviously you've been able to kind of pick your spots and whatnot and feel comfortable skipping some events. I know there's a long way to go before anything passes, but say this all passes next year with the schedule and whatnot, would that change your comfort in kind of being able to pick your spots or would it generally be the same, assuming you play well enough to still --
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I think with the Track 1 events expanded to 120 players, I mean, I think I would back myself to finish in that top 100 or whatever it is if I play a limited schedule. So no, I'm going to -- you know, I've been doing this a long time. I've been on TOUR longer -- more than half of my life at this point. So I'll pick and choose my spots like I have been doing sort of the last 18 months to two years. Yeah, does it mean it makes it harder for myself to win the FedExCup or whatever the season-long title race is going to be called? Absolutely. But I'm okay with that because it brings balance to my life and let's me enjoy things outside of the game.
Q. Are you at a point where you figured out this is roughly how much I want to play or is it just kind of a month-to-month situation?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I like that I can give myself flexibility. I like that we have the option of the flexibility on this TOUR. We don't have to enter events until Friday at 5:00 p.m. before. So in the middle of the week before if you feel like you want to get some competitive reps under your belt, you can enter. So it is nice to have the flexibility.
But then at the same time, yeah, I would like to -- you know, I play from January through to December with some of the commitments I have over on the DP World Tour, so over the course of that 12-month period, I would like to get it to around -- 18 to 20 events seems to be a nice number for me.
Q. Off topic, Devil Wears Prada 2 --
RORY McILROY: Oscar worthy.
Q. How did that come about? And that's two movies, what, in two years for you?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I know.
Q. Is Colin Ferrell worried?
RORY McILROY: Absolutely not. After I won THE PLAYERS last year, in the press conference afterwards, someone -- it might have been Gabby asked me the question about, What did you do to get ready last night or to relax? And I said I watched the Devil Wears Prada. And that got back to the director, Dave Frankel, who has a bit of a connection to the game. His son actually played golf at Stanford.
So the movie reached out and they said, Look, we're shooting in New York in the summer. If you want to be a part of it, do a cameo, whatever, we would love to have you. And I ran it by Erica and she said, We are absolutely doing that. (Laughing).
Yeah, it was cool for both of us to be there and be in it and to sort of have the experience together was very cool.
Q. Is it true that the athletes want to be movie stars and movie stars want to be athletes? Have you found that in pro-ams at all?
RORY McILROY: Maybe movie stars want to be athletes. Maybe some athletes want to be movie stars, but not this athlete.
Q. You've won, I think, every tournament in the world except this one. What would it mean to win this one and what do you think the struggles have been here? You've been close a few times.
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I would say here and Tiger's event at Riviera, they're the two that I would love to win. I've been lucky enough to win at Bay Hill, but not while Arnold 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. Also, Jack and I share a nice history. We've known each other now for nearly 20 years -- or I've known him for nearly 20 years. He's been nothing but great to me and my family. So, yeah, this is certainly one I would love to get done.
Q. Is there a reason or --
RORY McILROY: Yeah, for being such a long golf course I feel like it takes driver out of my hand a lot, which, you know, I pride myself on that being one of my biggest weapons. The fairways pinch in right around the spots where I would be finishing driver. So it's frustrated me in a way that I feel like my biggest weapon is in some way neutralized here.
And then I have to play the golf course like most of the other guys in the field, which I think I can -- everyone plays from the same spots. It's more that there's bunkers that I think I can carry that I could get an advantage, but there's really no advantage to it because, obviously, the rough here is so penal, and then angles into greens. And so it's just about me being a little more disciplined and not being so aggressive with my strategy.
Q. You seem to be one who could appreciate what Adam has done in terms of coming up on his 100th consecutive major probably better than most. I wonder if you could speak to that. St. Andrews was the only one for you that you missed?
RORY McILROY: Yeah.
Q. I wonder if you could talk about what kind of an achievement that is.
RORY McILROY: It's absolutely incredible. I think to even just play 100 majors throughout your career is an amazing achievement, but to play 100 in a row is -- I just think about the level that you need to be at and no injuries, no -- you know, just there's a lot of things that need to sort of fall in line. No, you know, births of children that fall on those weeks, all that sort of stuff.
So it's incredibly impressive. I look at Adam and I look at Justin Rose, two guys that are at a very similar stage in their careers and have probably had two very similar careers, and I look at a lot of their contemporaries or the people that they grew up playing with, and basically all of them chose one route, and these two guys chose another, and it's been -- I have just so much respect for them to -- you know, it would have been very easy for them to take another path at the age that they were, but they both knuckled down and they have been rewarded for that.
Justin's had an amazing last couple of years. Adam continues to be one of the best players in the world. Yeah, I have so much respect for those two guys.
Q. Thoughts on Shinnecock. And also, Brian Rolapp's about to talk to us. Where do you think they're at in terms of getting the restructuring through? And then also, what do you think are the biggest obstacles?
RORY McILROY: Shinnecock looks good. The fairways are very generous. They're more generous than they were in 2018. But the first cut of rough is 5 inches long. So it's like the first cut is maybe three paces wide and then it gets into the fescue. So if you miss the fairway even by a yard, you're going to -- but you shouldn't. The fairways are very, very generous. So if you miss the fairway, I feel like you deserve a bad lie.
And the greens are -- it's still quite green. We played on Monday. The greens are rolling around 11, 11.2, something like that. And I really don't think they need to get much faster. I think if they can keep them at that green speed, they can get them firm, and they can use the hole locations that they want to use without having some of the struggles that they have had the last couple of U.S. Opens.
So to me, it's all about them just maintaining the green speeds really where they are and not getting them too out of hand, and I think it will be a great week. If it's set up the right way, I think it's one of the best championship tests in the country. I mean, it's an amazing golf course.
And then, yeah, I read what you guys write about what's going on and it seems like Josh Carpenter's got the inside track on a lot of this stuff. And so I really only know what I read, for the most part. I obviously maybe have an idea of, like, player sentiment on what's going on and maybe have talked to some your tournament directors or some sponsors.
But I think it's all heading in the right direction. Expanding the fields, I think, is something that everyone wanted, bringing cuts back in, giving guys more opportunities. We talked -- I talked to Brian about this a little bit on the golf course. I think the PGA TOUR used to be built on the number of opportunities guys had, but maybe those opportunities, the quality -- so it was like quantity over quality. Where I think this is really going to be quality playing opportunities, expanding the fields, but when I was on the board we went through this process of deciding to cut the number of TOUR cards to a hundred, because I feel like if you have your TOUR card it should mean something. You should know where you're playing, you should know what events you're getting into. And I think that's what this structure is going to be able to do.
Q. When you got the third leg of the slam at the Open Championship in 2014, when you got to the Masters in 2015 did you feel any more pressure prior to close it out than you did before that?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I was playing for two things then. I wasn't just playing to win the Masters, I was playing to join this group of people that I, you know, dreamed of joining one day. And I probably brought a bit on -- like there was a lot of hype going into that one. I had done like -- I was on the cover of seemed like every golf magazine. I had done a lot of stuff. Which is, again, in hindsight, if I was really just focused on preparing the best way I could, I probably would have maybe not done as much of that stuff leading into it. But I still, I played well, I finished fourth. I don't think anyone was going to beat Jordan that year in 2015. But, yeah, I definitely, that's when it switched from it would be cool to win the Masters to, you know, everything else that came along with it.
Q. Did it hit you immediately like when you got on property, was it the lead up that you could feel it, or was it just through the course of playing in 2015 that it happened?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, it was during the lead up to it, yeah, probably since I finished 2014 winning those last two majors and it was literally like everything was geared towards 2015 at Augusta and trying to get this done and going for, not just the Grand Slam, but my third major in a row, and all that stuff. So I leaned into it. In hindsight, I maybe leaned into it a little too much. And then as the years went by it just felt like it was getting harder and harder.
THE MODERATOR: All right, thank you for the time, best of luck this week.
RORY McILROY: Thank you.
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