Rory McIlroy sparks concerns with ‘very worrying’ US Open behavior

By JAKE FENNER

With the US Open set to tee off from Oakmont Country Club in western Pennsylvania, all eyes will be on the top golfers in the world – including reigning Masters champion Rory McIlroy.

McIlroy’s high from finally achieving the career Grand Slam has appeared to come to a very quick end in the weeks since that victory in April.

After his win in Augusta, McIlroy hasn’t been victorious since – and even missed the cut at the RBC Canadian Open last week.

Add to that his controversy surrounding his TaylorMade driver at the PGA Championship and the rise of Scottie Scheffler and there’s some cause for concern.

All of this combined has led to some concern from Irish golfer and former European Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley, who believes that what we have seen is ‘not normal Rory’ after a press conference that McIlroy gave at Oakmont.

Speaking to Sky Sports, McGinley said, ‘You’d have to say it was very worrying looking at his press conference there. His eyes weren’t alive. The energy was not there.

Rory McIlroy’s recent struggles have drawn concern from a former Ryder Cup captain

Irish golfer Paul McGinley believes the McIlroy we’ve seen is ‘not normal Rory’ after Augusta

McIlroy goes into Oakmont after missing the cut in Canada and struggling at the PGA

‘He certainly didn’t have the pointy elbows the way we saw coming into the Masters. [At the Masters] he was a man on a mission, he was a man on a bounce, he was a man out to prove something. “Get out of my way, here I come.” You could see that and feel the energy.

‘You don’t see it at the moment. I know from my own experience, when you win tournaments, you check out. You don’t feel the same. You want to be there, and you put in the energy, but something inside you is just missing.

‘It takes some time for that to reset, and I think he’s going through a period of that. He’s completed a Grand Slam – it’s a huge achievement.

‘I’m no psychologist but it looks like the air has been sucked out of him a little since that, not just in the way he’s played but in his press conferences. It’s very un-Rory-like to have such low energy. This is not normal Rory.

‘This is not when he’s at his best. In my opinion, I think he’s at his best when he’s p***ed off or following off a big loss or something that went wrong.’

McIlroy has been on record saying that it’s been hard to motivate himself after donning the green jacket for the first time.

‘You dream about the final putt going in at the Masters, but you don’t think about what comes next,’ McIlroy said. He later said that he was just taking things ‘tournament by tournament at this point.’

However, it appears the Irishman believes his cut in Canada could give him a needed spark: ‘It makes it easier to reset in some way, to be like, “Okay, I sort of need to get my stuff together here and get back to the process and sort of what I’d been doing for that seven months from October last year until April this year.”‘

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Rory McIlroy sparks concerns with ‘very worrying’ US Open behavior

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