Rory McIlroy chasing fourth Quail Hollow victory to lay down USPGA marker
Rory McIlroy is in a tantalising position here to win the fourth tournament of his career at Quail Hollow. However, the history we all know he craves to repeat most vehemently will come at the USPGA Championship next Sunday.
The last time McIlroy won a major title was the Wanamaker Trophy at Valhalla 10 years ago. Nobody, least of all the Northern Irishman, expected him to be returning to the Louisville layout a decade on, still stuck on four.
Yet as the fans – or at least social media – has roundly written off his chances of joining the likes of Seve Ballesteros on five, so he has increasingly insisted that he will not stop trying and that, in terms of form in the majors alone, he feels closer than ever to ending one of golf’s most unexpected barren spells.
And his performance so far here in Charlotte at the Wells Fargo Championship will only convince him that the scene of his most recent Big-Four glory could also be the next.
McIlroy started the third round four behind Olympic champion Xander Schauffele, but he vowed to chase down the American and did exactly that, closing within one after a 67 to reach 11-under.
There was not to be the 62 on this layout that he shot in 2010 to win his first PGA Tour title, or the 61 he compiled in 2015 to prevail here again. Yet after struggling for three months after his fine year’s start in Dubai – where he finished second and first – this bogeyless effort, the joint-best round of the day, on a drying course was composed and hugely promising in the wake of the emergency lessons he sought with legendary coach Butch Harmon before finishing tied 22nd at the last Masters.
“I’ve leaned on the driver a lot, driven the ball very, very well, which is a continuation of how I’ve felt,” he said. “It feels like it’s all coming together.”
If the victory at the Zurich Classic – the PGA Tour’s pairs tournament – alongside compatriot Shane Lowry two weeks ago handed him some much-needed confidence, then the technical gremlins seem to have taken leave as well.
McIlroy calls this wonderful North Carolina city “my second home” and he will rubberstamp that affection if he makes it a quartet of Quail Hollow wins and establishes it on his CV as his most productive stamping ground. It is not entirely dissimilar to Valhalla, the USPGA venue where he beat Phil Mickelson and Rickie Fowler by a shot in 2014. That came after the week following a PGA Tour victory (another portent, perhaps) and two weeks after his triumph at the Open at Hoylake. Nothing could stop him in those days.
“I thought at that point in time that we might see Rory win 10 major championships,” Andy North, the two-time US Open winner and now ESPN analyst, said. “He had limitless ability, unbelievable length, could do everything and was making it look really easy. But life changes. You get married. You have kids. You have other business obligations. Your focus becomes not as singular on golf as it should be, and every single good player has gone through that.”
McIlroy, himself, acknowledged last week that “golf was absolutely everything to me then and I lived and died by every result”. “It’s a little different today where I’m married, have a child and after the round you’re just a father,” he added to The Quadrilateral newsletter. “Even at Los Angeles Country Club last year [where he finished one-shot second in the US Open to Wyndham Clark] I went back to the house afterwards and I’m just dad. It’s a different perspective. So I think that’s where I don’t live and die as much by my results or by the day-to-day anymore like I used to.”
However, he still cares, as anyone will know who has watched the latest Netflix “Full Swing” series. After last year’s US PGA he declared to his camp in the locker room: “I feel good enough to f------ top-10 in my head [in the majors], but not good enough to win.”
Another victory at Quail on Sunday might not make him so hollow.
