Rory McIlroy reveals 3 remaining career goals — and 2 might surprise you

The PGA Tour has missed Rory McIlroy so far in 2025. And there’s a good reason so many are excited for his return this week at the 2025 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. He is, simply, one of the greatest players of all time, and he’s still in his prime.

McIlroy earned that designation with four major victories among 26 total PGA Tour wins, 18 DP World Tour wins and five Ryder Cup victories.

Despite those accomplishments, McIlroy still has a few big things left on his career agenda. He laid them out this week an interview with BBC Sport. The first remaining goal will be a surprise to exactly no one. However, the other two are a little more surprising.

First, the obvious one:

“Winning the Masters.”

While Rory has won two PGA Championships, one U.S. Open and one Open Championship, he hasn’t won a major in over 10 years. And he’s never won the Masters. In fact, he’s famously snake-bitten at Augusta National.

Look no further than 2011. Playing in his second Masters, McIlroy built a four-stroke lead heading into Sunday, only to collapse with an embarrassing 80.

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But he’s played well since, earning a runner-up in 2022, a 4th in 2015, and T5-finishes in 2018 and 2022.

Most importantly in terms of his career legacy, a win at the Masters would give him a career grand slam. That would make him just the sixth golfer in history to accomplish that feat.

But on to the next career goal that McIlroy revealed to BBC Sport, and perhaps the most surprising one:

“Winning an Olympic medal.”

Why is this one such a shock? McIlroy wasn’t exactly enthused about Olympic golf when it initially returned back in 2016. He was one of many stars that skipped the Rio Games despite being qualified. Ahead of the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo, McIlroy still wasn’t thrilled about the event, despite agreeing to play it.

“I don’t know if there’s much to look forward to,” McIlroy said at the 2021 Open when asked about the Olympics. “I’m looking forward to getting another week of golf in and trying to get my game in shape … I’m not a very patriotic guy. I’m doing it because I think it’s the right thing to do.”

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But after his experience at the 2021 Games, Rory completely flipped his opinion about the event. After thoroughly enjoying the experience, he admitted, “I’m happy to be proven wrong.”

Then after finishing just outside of a playoff for the bronze medal in the 2024 Paris Games, he called the event, “one of the best individual competitions I’ve been a part of.”

Now, winning an Olympic medal is near the top of his to-do list.

Which brings us to Rory’s final stated goal, one that is surprising in that it has nothing to do with individual accomplishments.

“Another away Ryder Cup.”

Though initially he showed a Tiger-like disinterest in the Ryder Cup, it’s since become one of McIlroy’s favorite parts of the game. He’s been a part of seven European Ryder Cup teams. Five of those teams won the Cup. But only one of those wins occurred on American soil.

Incredibly, no team has won an away Ryder Cup since the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah outside of Chicago. That year, Europe entered Sunday singles down 10-6, then put together one of the great comebacks in the event’s history to win 14.5-13.5.

Since then, the home team has won every Ryder Cup.

McIlroy explained his thoughts in more detail during his pre-tournament press conference at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

“Playing an away Ryder Cup for me, I’ve alluded to this a lot, but I feel like winning an away Ryder Cup is one of the toughest things to do in golf at the minute,” McIlroy told reporters. “Obviously the Europeans have an opportunity to do that, which would being really cool.”

He then detailed exactly why winning an away Ryder Cup is so difficult.

“From my perspective, what makes an away Ryder Cup so difficult is obviously the crowd is one thing. So like for example in Rome, when we got off to that really fast start on Friday morning, we could ride that momentum and we could really get carried along by the crowd into Friday afternoon and then we won that session. Paul McGinley sort of describes it as like wave after wave, and that’s very easy to do at home, very difficult to do away,” Rory said on Tuesday.

McIlroy then argued that due to how “analytical” golf has become, the home team is able to thoroughly vet their opponents’ stats, find out where they have an advantage, and then set the course up to favor their team.

He provided his European team’s strategy at the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome as an example.

“We understood that the Americans were slightly better wedge players than we were, so there was a few par-4s that were probably going to be wedges in that we made drivable. So we took wedge out of their hand, it put the strength in ours with fairway wood or driver. It mightn’t seem so much like in a one-off match, but over the course of 28 matches it sort of adds up,” he explained. “So those are the things that the home team has control over. So you can set the golf course up to play into the home team’s hands. That combined with the crowd support and getting that momentum early, if you do — if you do fall behind as the away team, it’s very, very difficult to come back.”

The good news for Rory is he won’t have to wait long to get a shot at accomplishing two of his three remaining career goals. The 2025 Masters kicks off April 10 at Augusta National. Then in September, McIlroy’s European team will face off against Team USA in an away Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in New York.