ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Rory McIlroy can end the season as Europe’s top player for the sixth time with a win at the Abu Dhabi Championship this week.
He will try to do that with a new throw.
No. 3-ranked McIlroy said he had been hunting in a studio — first in Florida, then in New York — for three weeks, hitting balls on a modified swing screen and not even looking at the plane of his shot.
He has been unhappy with his swing for a long time, he said on Wednesday, and wants to be strong enough to hold on to pressure-filled moments after missing so many opportunities this season. The highlight was at the US Open in June, where he missed two putts from within 3 feet of the final three holes on Sunday to pave the way for Bryson DeChambeau’s victory and extend McIlroy’s decade without a major title.
“The only way I was going to make a change, or at least go in the right direction, with my swing was to lock myself in the studio and not see the flight of the ball a little bit and focus completely on the swing,” McIlroy. said.
“It’s something,” he added, “just making my golf swing work well, and if it works well, then it won’t go down too much under pressure. Looking back on my year, the one thing I can blame myself for is that I’ve had these opportunities to win.”
McIlroy has won twice this year, at the Dubai Desert Classic and the Wells Fargo Championship, and has four runner-up finishes, including most recently at the Irish Open and the BMW PGA Championship on the European Tour.
That left the Northern Irishman frustrated but clear in the Race to Dubai rankings which decide the best player of the year on the European Tour. A win in Abu Dhabi would seal the title and remove doubt, at least for McIlroy, at the final event of the season, the World Tour Championship in Dubai next week.
“If I go out and win this week, obviously you know, it makes it boring next week,” said the four-time major champion. “But I won’t find it boring. It will be interesting.”
A sixth Tour to Dubai title — formerly known as the Order of Merit — would put McIlroy level with the late Seve Ballesteros on the all-time list and just two behind Colin Montgomerie, who holds the record eight.
“I’m a European player,” McIlroy said. “I would like to go down as the most successful European rider of all time. Obviously the Race to Dubai win can count for that but also the big championships and hopefully I have a few Ryder Cups ahead of me as well.
“So that’s what I’d like to do [do]. I think [it] it’s an achievable goal in the next 10 years.”
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