victory at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am <\/a>last Sunday.<\/p>\nMcIlroy finished in a tie for 14th, five shots behind Morikawa but hitting an impressive final-round 64 as he builds up to the defence of his Masters title in April.<\/p>\n
“I’m working through that first bit of the year where I’m trying to shake a bit of rust off,” said the five-time major winner.<\/p>\n
“I learnt a lot about my game last week. I played well for a lot of it but made some big numbers which put me out of contention on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“I feel there is enough good in there for me to be encouraged going out there this week.<\/p>\n
“I think the fact that I’m hitting a lot of good shots, putting it close and converting a lot of putts, that has to give me confidence not just for this week but going forward.”<\/p>\n
McIlroy’s best finish in the tournament came four years ago when he ended in joint 10th.<\/p>\n
‘Horrible change’<\/p>\n
McIlroy practised on Wednesday on the Riviera course, which includes a change to the par-three fourth hole.<\/p>\n
It has been extended from 237 yards to 273 yards and the Northern Irishman is not a fan of the change.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think it plays any differently, you’re just hitting a slightly longer club – actually I think it’s a horrible change.<\/p>\n
“Fifteen percent of the field hit the green last time when it played 230. If you want it to be a 275 par-three you have to change the apron leading up on to the green.<\/p>\n
“It can’t be kikuyu, it has to be another type of grass that can help you run it on to the green.<\/p>\n
“Because in the right conditions you try to fly it on to the green with a three iron it’s going to finish up on the fifth tee box.<\/p>\n
“That’s sort of what I mean that it’s not a great change.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy is happy with his game as he prepares to challenge for a first Genesis Invitational success…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1553,1345,3536,399,1341,714],"class_list":["post-21739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-genesis-invitational","tag-collin-morikawa","tag-genesis-invitational","tag-riviera-country-club","tag-rory-mcilroy","tag-the-genesis-invitational","tag-tommy-fleetwood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}