Rory McIlroy, on the way into work with Justin Rose on Tuesday, says he was talking to him about it. In the pro golf world, the ole 9-to-5 label gets scrapped for a 1-to-52 tag, as there’s seemingly always another tournament, always another swing, always another swing thought, from New Year’s Day through New Year’s Eve. Mind you, he wasn’t seeking pity, and the office-working types won’t give him any.
Still, it can start to feel drudgerous, though somewhat less so when McIlroy, of Northern Ireland, and Rose, of England, return closer to home, which they’ve done this week, at the Genesis Scottish Open.
“Yeah, I think the one thing I would say about the last couple of weeks,” McIlroy said, “is I felt like I could detach a little bit more and sort of hide in a way. And sometimes you need that to completely get away from — I feel like this world of golf can become all encompassing if you let it.
“But I think if you remove yourself a little bit from that environment — Justin Rose and I came up here together yesterday and we were just chatting about the — I don’t know, there’s a detachment from the sort of week-in, week-out grind when you get back over here, when you play PGA Tour golf for that sort of first 25, 30 weeks of the year.”
For those keeping score, we’re in week 28 of 2025, and the previous 27 have been momentous for McIlroy. In early February, he won at Pebble Beach. In mid-March, he won the Players Championship. In early April, he won the Masters, which completed the career Grand Slam. Then there are the weeks since, which have been spotty, due in part to average play by his standards, some reporter flare-ups and some driver questions. And yet, by now, there’s reason to believe McIlroy will persevere, thanks to not only a successful record, but also a proven faculty to rebound.
He has staying power. Longevity. Which he said Wednesday is “one of the underappreciated things about any sport.”
Of course, the idea’s not astonishing. But it’s revealing.
“You look at what [Novak] Djokovic is doing at Wimbledon over the last couple weeks,” McIlroy said, “or what some of those guys have done or what someone like a Cristiano Ronaldo is still doing at 40 years old, or Tom Brady in American football; that longevity piece is something that maybe isn’t talked about enough.
“Because once you get to a certain level, I feel like the journey on the way up is almost — it’s not — I’m not going to say it’s easy, but you have momentum and you’re riding that wave to the top. And then once you get there, yeah, it takes just as much work, if not more work, to stay there. Because I think about my career before I won this major this year, the last major I won in 2014, I had never heard of Scottie Scheffler.”
The constant adjustment, McIlroy said, is the trick. What you had a decade ago might be outdated.
But you have to remember who you are. It’s a balancing act.
“So these talents and these players just keep coming and keep getting better each and every generation,” McIlroy said, “and I think you have to adapt your game to make sure that you’re able to hang with these generations, and I feel like I’m one generation ahead of Scottie, for example, who is still in his 20s.
“You see all these younger kids that are coming up, the likes of a Michael Thorbjornsen or Luke Clanton or these guys that basically are ready to play at the top level coming out of college, and you have to make sure you’re staying on top of what makes you such a great player. But you also have to look at the trends and see, OK, well, the guys that are playing well, what are they doing or what are they — is there something that I need to add to my repertoire to keep trying to stay ahead of them.”
The question is: For how long will he do it?
With McIlroy, age is a thing. He’s 36, and good golf years certainly remain. And yet, on Wednesday, he talked of his family settling into a new house in England. He talked of having more “fun,” a New Year’s resolution, and he’s taken steps toward fulfilling that by watching a German soccer match, stopping in Istanbul “for a night off,” and taking his daughter, Poppy, skiing in Montana. That’s some kind of globe-hopping, for sure. But new priorities can appear.
Then there’s the grand slam, a most celebrated achievement after straining for it since the 2015 Masters. Maybe it’ll free him up for more majors. Or perhaps refocusing will prove difficult. Last month, at the U.S. Open, he admitted as much. He’d dreamed of winning at Augusta — “but you don’t think about what comes next,” he said at Oakmont. Time will tell the direction McIlroy will travel.
Though maybe time has already told. While it’s underappreciated, longevity earns you some benefit of the doubt.
“It’s my 18th year or tour,” McIlroy said. “I’ve been winning professional events for 16 years, and I just think my drive to keep trying to get a little bit better or trying to look for little holes in my game that I can tidy up, I think that’s a big piece of it.”
