San Francisco (United States) (AFP) – Defending champion Rory McIlroy makes his US PGA Tour season debut in Thursday’s opening round of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, confident in his game and a return to familiar equipment. McIlroy won last year at Pebble Beach and The Players Championship before his epic triumph at the Masters to complete a career Grand Slam.
“Game feels in good shape. I feel pretty good coming in here,” McIlroy said. “I want to move on and I’ve got more goals. There’s more things I want to try to accomplish and achieve.” That includes repeating as a champion at Pebble Beach, the site of next year’s US Open. “It was a perfect way to start the year here last year,” McIlroy said. “Hoping for something similar this week.”
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The five-time major winner from Northern Ireland switched to cavity-back irons for last December’s Australian Open and two events this year in Dubai but is back to familiar equipment this week. “Sort of messed around with some different iron setups and sort of messed around with a different ball and a few equipment changes,” he said. “That experiment’s over, back to the trusty irons I’ve played basically my whole career. It just was a different feel, especially under pressure or in the heat of competition. Just didn’t feel as familiar as I wanted it to.”
– Chasing Scheffler –
McIlroy remains second in the world rankings behind American Scottie Scheffler, who won his 20th career PGA title last month at the American Express in the California desert. “If I had a critique of myself last year it’s that I didn’t bring the consistency that I maybe would have wanted post the Masters. Some of that is sort of understandable, but Scottie just had his 17th top-10 in a row,” McIlroy said. “He’s relentless. I’ll never stop singing Scottie’s praises because he’s incredible at what he’s doing and the way he does it.”
McIlroy compared him to Tiger Woods in his prime. “I’ve had nice runs like that, but I’ve always been a little more up and down. I think anyone that wants to catch Scottie or get anywhere close is going to have to consistently bring that sort of game week in and week out like he does,” McIlroy said. “He’s really the first one since Tiger that’s doing this.”
While McIlroy would love another Pebble Beach win to kickstart his season, he said the conditions at the seaside course in February won’t be much of a predictor for next year’s US Open. “I would expect the US Open setup to be thicker rough. You’re handcuffed a little bit more in a US Open setup than you are traditionally when we play at this time of the year,” he said. “This time of the year the greens are soft, you bomb driver even to that back right pin, it’s fine, but if you were to do that in a US Open and you miss the fairway, you just have to hit it to the front of the green and try to two-putt from 50 feet. There’s a little more strategy involved in June if you get the conditions the way the USGA would like them.”
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