McIlroy aims to "fill up confidence bucket" in Houston

Rory McIlroy

Rory McIlroy is determined “fill up the confidence bucket” as he bids to win his final competitive warm-up for the Masters at the Texas Children's Houston Open.

Fresh from a visit to Augusta following his second win of the season in The Players at TPC Sawgrass, the Holywood star joins world number one Scottie Scheffler as well as Pádraig Harrington and Séamus Power at Memorial Park Golf Course looking to build on a stellar start to the season.

“I just want to get a card in my hand and shoot scores and hopefully get myself in contention and try to win another golf tournament,” said McIlroy, who revealed there were four new greens at Augusta and fewer trees following Hurricane Helene last year.

“It's not as if I'm playing here this week and thinking about two weeks time. “I'm here. I'm in the present. I'm trying to do my best this week, and I'm trying to win this golf tournament.”

At 7,475 yards, McIlroy feels the course is perfect for his game and his goal is to keep his hot run of form going and win for a third time before the Masters for the first time.

“I've watched this tournament the last couple of years, especially since it moved to this date instead of the fall, and felt like it was a golf course that would, that would be right up my alley, and would suit my game and suit my style of play,” he said. “Im excited to just keep going. It's been a great start to the season for me, and I want to continue that.”

After winning at Sawgrass with his B game, McIlroy has been working to get better and he’s keen to see those improvements this week.

“I'm obviously in playing well,” he said. “I want to keep playing well. So I think every, every round you play where you see good things, you're sort of filling up that confidence bucket a little bit.

“Look, it was great to get a win a couple weeks ago, but I still feel like I could have played a lot better.

“I tried to poke holes in a lot of my game last week and think about things I could do better. And there was definitely a few things that I that I could work on or do better.

“So it's a good opportunity to go out and see if some of the work I did at home, and I'm continuing to do here, hopefully it's all going in the right direction.”

As for his visit to Augusta, he said the main goal was to get work done that will take the pressure off during Masters week.

“I use those trips just to re familiarise myself with the place —  clubs off tees, you, looking to see if they changed any greens,” he said.

“There’s four greens that are new this year that they've redone, so you have a look at those and see if there's any new hole positions they could use, stuff like that.

“Honestly, for me, it's nice to play a practice round without people around, and it sort of takes the pressure off the start of the week for me.

‘There’s a lot of obligations. There's big commitments, whether it be from media or the par three tournament on Wednesday.

So I just like to get up there and feel like I'm not rushed, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the week of the tournament. And that's, that's usually the reason I go there.”