Rory McIlroy's US Open prep plan 'to try to get ahead' after Memorial learnings
Rory McIlroy’s Memorial Tournament mindset picked out the positives but with a special focus on one key area heading into his third major of the season.
McIlroy finished tied 12th on Sunday in Ohio before he headed home to the United Kingdom for some time with family ahead of a weekend US return towards the US Open.
The back-to-back Masters champion is chasing a seventh career major to move past Nick Faldo as Europe’s most successful player – however, his immediate concerns centre more on small but significant gains over big-picture glory as he stated as “absolutely” a goal to discover driver developments.
Having struggled to consistently find fairways across his Memorial experience, McIlroy reflected on areas in need of improvement before tackling Shinnecock Hills from June 18.
“Overall, not a bad week...got some good stuff out of it and I've got a week to prep and get ready for Shinnecock,” said McIlroy, who highlighted a sense of “two steps forward, one step back”. “My iron play was better, wedge play was good...off the tee still wasn't where I want it to be.
"Thankfully, the fairways at Shinnecock are a little wider than they are here but, yeah, still need to work on that...I need to work on how I'm hitting it off the tee.
"But everything else...putting felt pretty good, for the most part.
"Just try to keep getting a little bit better each and every day heading into Shinnecock.
"I'll go back to England tonight and then I'll spend six days there and then we'll fly, probably, Saturday into Westhampton.”
McIlroy’s US Open prep ambition in New York is “to go off really super early before people start playing the back nine...so try to get off at like 6:30am, make the turn by 8:30am, just to try to get ahead of everyone else”.