At the end of each of the last two PGA Championships, Rory McIlroy has been frustrated with golf -- frustrated to the point he has suggested he might skip at least one of the PGA Tour's FedEx Cup playoff events.
After a T-50 finish at Bellerive on Sunday, the four-time major champion again said he might skip the playoff opener, The Northern Trust in New Jersey.
“I need to assess where I’m at,” McIlroy said after posting 2-under 278, 14 adrift of winner Brooks Koepka. “The best thing for me to do right now is take a couple days off and reflect on what I need to do going forward.”
McIlroy has struggled, at least by his standard, in many facets of the game. He faded quickly on Sunday in a mano a mano matchup with Patrick Reed in the final Masters pairing. He nearly pulled of a Sunday miracle at Carnoustie in an effort to win a fifth major, but he came up short. He was never really part of the equation at Bellerive. That's a disappointment for McIlroy after breaking a winless skid in March at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
“There’s a lot of room for improvement,” McIlroy said. “My swing hasn’t been where I want it to be. It was pretty good at the start of the year, but it has regressed as the season has gone on and you fall back into some of the habits you don’t want to fall back into.”
Last year, McIlroy made a similar threat, initially considering skipping all of the FedEx Cup playoffs. Perhaps goaded by sponsors and the Tour, McIlroy wound up playing the three playoff events for which he was eligible, and then he played in the British Masters and Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on the European Tour.
