Grand Slam winning Rory McIlroy found himself the player facing the attending media on the second day of official practice ahead of this week’s 108th hosting of the PGA Championship at the Aronimink Golf Club in Pennsylvania.
McIlroy was first into the media centre on Tuesday and as per unusal, it was McIlroy as his informative best.
The double PGA Champion, and needing to capture a seventh major to become the winningest European-born major champion, is contesting his 18th straight PGA Championship since a first in 2009 and having been handed the Rodman Wanamaker trophy in 2012 and 2014.
McIlroy spent some 20 minutes with the accredited media.
And one of the more topical subjects McIlroy faced was his thoughts of the current state of the ancient club-and-ball game.
“It’s a much more condensed schedule than it used to be,” McIlroy said.
“We used to go from April to the end of August. It’s now April to the middle of July. So it’s condensed, and you have to — I think that’s why I need to — especially after the last couple of years, I need to take the time after the Masters to reset and decompress and get myself in the right mental space again to get myself up for this tournament and keep going for the U.S. Open and The Open Championship.”
McIlroy explained that he went into the 2025 PGA Championship with uncertainty about his immediate future. That’s because of the gravity that came with chasing – and then achieving – the career grand slam at Augusta National.
After accomplishing such a monumental feat, joining just five others in the long history of men’s golf, he hadn’t reset goals, “or found whatever that motivation was to keep going or go forward and set myself goals for the rest of my career. It probably took me a good few months to get to that point.”
The 37-year-old, 30-time PGA TOUR winner has that figured out now.
“As I’ve said, like last week, coming into this tournament feels a lot different than what it did last year,” McIlroy said. “I feel like I’ve got some nice clear road ahead to try to get some more of these majors.”
The six-time major winner, who counts two PGA Championships (2012 and 2014) on that list, said that from what he’s seen at Aronimink, players can be aggressive off the tees.
“I like the style of golf,” McIlroy said.
“I like the bunkering. There’s a lot of bunkers. I think it provides quite a nice bit of variety with shorter par-4s, a couple of longer par-4s. The par-3s, there’s three pretty long ones and a shorter one. I think in this day and age I’m not sure if it’s going to test all aspects of your bag. There’s going to be a lot of — again, as I said, strategy off the tee is pretty nonexistent.
“It’s, basically, bash driver down there and then figure it out from there, which I think is a lot of these newer — newly renovated — I think about Oak Hill in 2023, here. When these traditional golf courses take a lot of trees out, it makes strategy not as much of a concern off the tee.”
That may be the case off the green, but McIlroy knows it won’t be the case for the greens. With a week expected to be mostly dry, a lot more thought will need to be given to shots into greens.
“The greens are the main focus this week, and I think getting yourself in the right sections of the greens, making sure you leave yourself below the hole for the most part,” he said. “That’s the key this week. Again, I’ve only played four competitive rounds here. I don’t know the place that well to give you a great answer on what I like about it, but Philadelphia’s a wonderful golfing city, a lot of great golf courses, and this is certainly one of them.”
While there hasn’t been much tournament golf for McIlroy since the Masters, he’s still been keeping a busy schedule. There was no NYC media tour following this year’s Masters victory, but he did take a trip to New York with his wife.
McIlroy also attended the State Dinner at the White House on April 28 and made a cameo in The Devil Wears Prada 2, released in theaters on May 1.
About the cameo… After winning the 2025 Players Championship, McIlroy was asked what he did to prepare for the final round. He said he had dinner, then watched The Devil Wears Prada when he got back to his room.
David Frankel, the movie’s director, heard about it and asked McIlroy to make a cameo. So, he did.
“Pretty good,” McIlroy laughed. “I know how fortunate I am and so lucky to be in this position in life, and sometimes you have to enjoy the perks because I know that this isn’t going to last forever. There’s going to be a day where I’m not sitting up here and I’m not competing for major championships and I’m not doing what I’m doing. So I guess while I’m doing it, I have to enjoy it, as well. Yeah, it’s been amazing, but there’s still a lot of things I want to achieve. But if I can enjoy it along the way, that’s a nice thing to do.”
