Inside the mind of Rory McIlroy: The collapse of the last round of golf – Golf News

Any golf fan who has spent a week thinking about Rory McIlroy’s fall in the final round at the US Open will be left scratching their head about what went wrong. But rather than simply repeating what the initial reports have said, it’s time to delve deeper into the logic at play here.

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It won’t escape your attention that Rory has had some domestic instability of late. After initially filing for divorce, he and his wife had a lot of back and forth. While we don’t want to speculate about what’s personal, it’s clear that the pressure and frustration that will be going on behind the scenes would not have a positive impact on the build-up to the tournament.

Pinehurst is a tough place to play and perform at the best of times; having an unstable home life that the world’s media seems happy to write about will make it even more difficult. Although the married couple appear to be settling their differences before the tournament begins, it can be said that the increased level of media scrutiny will have a negative impact on McIlroy’s mind. I hope for his sake this is something that can be much more going forward.

The weight of expectation

When a player bursts onto the scene the way he did it’s natural to feel like things aren’t going well when you take 10 years without a major. Although he is still one of the best golfers in the world, he is not (yet) the dominant force that many predicted he would be. This will probably be stored somewhere in his mind, waiting to come out during those catch-up moments when players like Mr. Woods someone historically has never led.

Feeling like he ‘should’ hit the shot and kicking himself twice hard those times when he’s reached will serve to put more pressure on the next shot. Although no one can say with certainty that this is what is happening, it is true that the results show that there is a certain degree of uncertainty about his ability to come to the fore in high-pressure moments.

DeChambeau’s x-factor

Getting fired by a striker who seems to bend the rules of the conference to suit his game is never going to be an easy thing to deal with. Whether DeChambeau is packing on more muscle or using his own custom putter, he thinks about the game differently for everyone. This makes him unpredictable, hard to learn, and someone who doesn’t want to chase you as you work through your last 18 holes.

However, we don’t want to write a piece when we say that McIlroy was taken for nothing more than a double whammy from another player: he wasn’t. This was a breakdown pure and simple, but one that could not have been exacerbated by the quality of the man chasing him. That said, if you want to win at Pinehurst, there’s always going to be someone chasing you on the back nine – there’s nothing unusual about DeChambeau chasing the way he did.

An inherent mental deficiency?

It would be unfair to call McIlroy a ‘chocker’ or ‘bottle’ because he has won so many majors. It is clear that he has the game to compete at the highest level and has already shown that he can cross the finish line. The problem is that this victory was ten years ago and a lot can change in that time.

Winning at a young age is somewhat easier than when you are older and more experienced as you are not afraid of anything. If you can withstand the pressure of the moment (and he certainly could) then you play with the freedom and sense of abandonment that comes with youth: you don’t know or care what might happen if your game crashes. separately. You take the course one hole at a time, and you take each hole one shot at a time. You feel like you’re working your way around your local club in a way that’s hard to put into words.

Come back to 2024, however, and playing on the fairway and green shows that Rory may be overthinking key parts of his game. Whether that’s trickery, stroke play, or club choice we’ll never know — we can’t get inside his head — but the way he rolled at the US Open is a clear sign that something is wrong.

What can I do about it?

Golf is one of those high-pressure sports that is all about good margins and very little luck. While playing an online casino game or betting involves large elements of luck, the golfer is out there with nothing but his strategy to rely on. If his swing starts to waver because his mind is somewhere else, it can affect every stroke he plays.

Hiring a new coach or caddy is often the easiest thing to do because it forces problems on someone else; that may not be enough here. Sports psychology is now all the rage and certainly not the pursuit it was in the early 2000s. Hiring someone like Dr Steve Peters who helped everyone from Liverpool FC to snooker Ronnie O’Sullivan would be a step in the right direction.

In the end the decision is down to one person, and only he has the power to find the right way to take his game. A stable home life from here on out will play a role, but the 10-year gap since his last reign shows that there is still a lot to be done.