Rory McIlroy is back in Georgia for the first time since winning the Masters in Augusta in April, and he still gets emotional thinking about winning the green jacket.

McIlroy bought out the remaining inventory of 1,100 Masters flags from the merchandise shop last April before he left, and says the requests to autograph them will never get old.

“It’s been a lot,” McIlroy said of the flag-signings. “But I’ll never get sick of signing them. I’ve waited 17 years to sign that flag in the middle, and I will never complain about doing it.” 

By tradition, only Masters champions are allowed to sign in the middle of the Masters logo outline of the United States. McIlroy never violated that unwritten rule before finally donning a green jacket.

The Masters proved to be McIlroy’s third and final victory of the 2025 PGA Tour season, capping a run when he ruled the top of the FedEx Cup standings after wins at Pebble Beach and the Players Championship.

Since then, Scottie Scheffler regained his dominant form from 2024 and won five times including two majors and last week’s BMW Championship playoff event to roll into the Tour Championship at East Lake as the points leader for the fourth consecutive year. Scheffler has more than twice as many points (7,456) as McIlroy in second (3,687).

But none of that matters this week, as the PGA Tour scrapped its staggered tarting strokes system that had Scheffler beginning the Tour Championship at 10-under and at least two strokes ahead of anyone else.

“I’m in a better position than I have been the last few years, so that’s a nice thing,” McIlroy said.

Despite having his best chance to win a fourth FedEx Cup since the starting strokes started, he kind of misses the discarded format.

“I’m maybe part of the minority. I didn’t hate the starting strokes,” McIlroy said. “I thought that the player that played the best during the course of the season should have had an advantage coming in here. But the majority of people just didn’t like the starting strokes – whether it were players or fans. I was on the PAC when we were trying to go through that, and really it was just a way to try to simplify the advantage that the top players were going to get over the course of the week instead of [Golf Channel’s] Steve Sands doing calculations on a white board.

“But you could also argue if it was starting strokes this week, Scottie with a two-shot lead, it probably isn’t enough considering what he’s done this year and the lead that he has in the FedEx Cup going into this week. … 

“Look, it’s a 72-hole stroke-play event, and that’s what we play week in and week out. That’s what’s going to determine the winner. I don’t know if it’s the best format, but it’s the one that we have for this week.” 

McIlroy skipped the playoff opener in Memphis two weeks ago as well as three of the eight signature events in 2025 – the season-opening Sentry, the RBC Heritage after the Masters and the Memorial ahead of the U.S. Open.

On Wednesday, the PGA Tour announced its 2026 schedule and the biggest surprise is the addition of a ninth signature event right in the middle of the busiest stretch of the season. The tour, like so many corporate entities, chose to bend the knee to the American president and place an as-yet unsponsored signature event on the Blue Monster course at Doral in April.

That means there will be five signature events and four majors in four months from April to July, including a six-week stretch with five marquee tournaments from the Masters to the PGA with the Truist Championship at Wells Fargo and new Miami Championship in consecutive weeks ahead of the PGA. Only the Zurich Classic team event in New Orleans resides in the middle of that run.

McIlroy, surprisingly, endorsed the even more crowded schedule.

“I think it’s all positive when you have – golf builds through the January, February, March months, and obviously golf gets a huge popularity spike or whatever through Augusta,” he said. “And then to try to keep that momentum going, keep that momentum going through the next few weeks, through the PGA, U.S. Open, I think it’s a good thing.

“It’s quite a bit of a workload for the players to play that much golf in that stretch, but I think it’s not as if we’re having to travel halfway around the world to do it. These are all pretty easy stops on the East Coast for the most part. But I think it’ll be good. It’ll be a good schedule.” 

Will he continue to skip some of the events designed to bring all the best players together?

“I’ll always choose the schedule that best fits me, and this year that meant skipping a few signature events,” he said. “I might skip less next year. I might skip the same amount, I don’t know. It’s all just – the luxury of being a PGA Tour player is we are free to pick and choose our schedule for the most part, and I took advantage of that this year and I’ll continue to take advantage of that for as long as I can.” 

As for this week, McIlroy is ready for his 12th Tour Championship and seventh in a row since 2018.

“Anytime you make it back to East Lake you’ve had a good year, so it’s always nice to come back,” he said. “I’m on a nice little streak of playing some consistent golf over the last few years and getting myself back here.

“We’ve played this event and this golf course in a bunch of different formats. There’s been a lot of different ways that we’ve played it. The nines have changed, have flipped. There’s been a golf course renovation (in 2024), which I think is actually very, very good. I’m refamiliarizing myself with that today.

“Look, it has a different feel. Any one of the 30 has a chance to win the FedEx Cup this year, which is obviously a lot different than it’s been in previous years. I think with that, it’s a clean slate for everyone, and it’s a great opportunity for one of the guys that maybe wasn’t a huge part of the season to put their hand up and have a chance to win the big prize at the end of the year.”