McIlroy salutes “amazing to watch” Scheffler and vows to play less
Rory McIlroy. Credit: PGA Tour
Rory McIlroy says he’ll play less going forward after hitting “a wall” following his US Open reverse.
But the three-time FedExCup champion paid tribute to an “amazing watch” Scottie Scheffler after the American closed with a four-under 67 to claim the Tour Championship by four shots from Collin Morikawa on 30-under and the $25 million bonus.
After entering the final round five shots ahead of Morikawa, the world number one played his first eight holes in one-over to see his lead cut to just two strokes.
But he birdied the ninth from three feet and added birdies at the 10th and 11th to restore his five-shot advantage before going on to eagle the 14th and par his way home to take his earnings this season to a whopping $62,228,357 - $829,710 per PGA Tour round this season.
Morikawa shot 66 to finish on 26-under but had to settle for a $12.5 million bonus.
McIlroy closed with a bogey-free five-under 66 to tie for ninth with Shane Lowry, who shot 68, on nine under, giving them FedExCup bonuses of $1,608,333 each.
But while he still plans to play five DP World Tour events over the next few months, starting at next week’s Amgen Irish Open, he’ll play less on the US Tour going forward.
“It's been a long season, and I'm going just to have to think about trying to build in a few extra breaks here and there next year and going forward because I felt like I hit a bit of a wall sort of post-US Open, and still feel a little bit of that hangover,” said McIlroy, who will play 27 events worldwide this year.
“I'm usually sort of like a 22 sort of person. But again, that was when I was sort of in my 20s and didn't have the responsibilities that I do now.
“I'm going to try to cut it back to like 18 or 20 a year going forward, I think.”
It was Scheffler’s seventh win of the season and McIlroy was impressed by what he saw, especially his bogey-free rounds and his ability to make birdies.
“I think his consistency, his attitude,” he said. “I feel like he just sort of brings the same demeanour to the course every single day, no matter what position on the leaderboard he's in.
“He's just amazing to just watch the way he manages himself around the golf course.
“We'll look back on 2024 and it's obviously one of the best individual years that a player has had for a long time.”
McIlroy has work to do to bridge the gap with the world number one.
“He makes more birdies than I do and he makes less bogeys,” McIlroy said with a smile. “That sort of adds up to him being a little bit better right now.
“I think the one thing I've always admired about Scottie is the amount of bogey-free rounds he shoots.
“If you just go back over the last two, three years and you look at how many rounds he shoots that he'll shoot like four-under-par, no bogeys, doesn't look spectacular at all, but it's just so solid, doesn't really put himself out of position.
“When you don't make a ton of bogeys, the field has got to do something really special to keep up.”
McIlroy will tee it up at Royal County Down before playing the BMW PGA, the Dunhill Links Championship and the season-ending events in Abu Dhabi and Dubai as he seeks to become European number one for the sixth time.
But like Lowry, he’s also got one eye on Ryder Cup qualifying for Bethpage next year.
“I think once Rickie (Fowler) gave Tommy (Fleetwood) that putt on the 16th green I started thinking about Bethpage.
“Yeah, look, the qualifying started in Europe, and we're all trying to get points on the board early to make sure that we don't have to rely on a pick. I think that's obviously the big thing,” he said
“I think one of the great things that we did leading up to Rome is we pretty much had the team set a few months in advance, so hopefully, we can do the same thing again and know the 12 that we're bringing to New York pretty early so we can, I guess, think about pairings, think about all of those things that you need to so that once we get there a few weeks out, we're prepared and everyone knows what they're doing.”
