Rory McIlroy has reiterated his plan to continue to broaden his golfing horizons rather than get bogged down in the monotony of the tour having taken on board advice from tennis great Roger Federer.<\/p>\n
As the newest member of the sport’s career Grand Slam club after his victory in the Masters, McIlroy has given himself extra security, if it were even needed, to make decisions on his own terms.<\/p>\n
Before the end of the year the 36-year-old will play in India for the first time before returning to Australia as he has more option than most to pick and choose tournaments.<\/p>\n
The world number two was criticised last month for skipping the first FedEx Cup event on the PGA Tour as it did not affect his position in the rankings and offered a chance to have a break before a busy September which began with him winning last week\u2019s Irish Open, has now taken him to Wentworth for the BMW PGA Championship and will end with the Ryder Cup in New York.<\/p>\n
“I want to go and play in different places in the world and experience things that I haven\u2019t experienced before, to be able to do things for the first time 18 years into a career,” he told a press conference.<\/p>\n
“I had a chat with Roger Federer, I don\u2019t know, a few years ago sort of at the end of his career and he was saying he wanted to go and play a lot of the places he could never play in his career, some of the smaller events, just because a lot of people had never seen him play tennis before.<\/p>\n
“I think as time goes on and I get to this stage of my career, I get excited about doing that sort of thing.<\/p>\n
“I don\u2019t want to name a tournament but you\u2019re going back to the same place, the same thing 15, 20 years in a row, it can get a little bit monotonous and a little bit tedious.<\/p>\n
“I want to play in the locations that I love to go to, and I want to play the majors and the Ryder Cup. That\u2019s it.”<\/p>\n
McIlroy is not thinking about the end of his competitive career but acknowledges his priorities have shifted and he is no longer beholden to the weekly trudge around the circuit.<\/p>\n
“I don\u2019t want to be grinding out here at 50 years of age. I\u2019ll turn up and play the majors and have a nice time but whenever I\u2019m done, I\u2019m done, whenever that is,” he added.<\/p>\n
“That\u2019s certainly not right now, but I\u2019m certainly closer to that point now than I was in 2007 when I turned pro.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ll obviously do my bit to make sure I keep my membership on certain tours but I\u2019m going to play where I want to play.”<\/p>\n
McIlroy found himself at the centre of a Ryder Cup furore this week when the official United States team website started selling a 65 US dollar (\u00a348) T-shirt which appears to feature his likeness in silhouette.<\/p>\n
“It looks more like Adam Scott than me but yeah, it looks a little similar, I don\u2019t know,” he told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
When it was put to him American fans would be wearing a T-shirt bearing his image he added: “That\u2019s OK. That\u2019s fine. I won\u2019t mind that.”<\/p>\n
McIlroy, who recently moved into a house on the Wentworth estate, will play the first two days alongside Ryder Cup team-mates Shane Lowry and Jon Rahm, with all 11 present members of captain Luke Donald\u2019s team also paired up.<\/p>\n
Recent PGA Tour winners Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Rose are joined by defending champion Billy Horschel, while Ludvig Aberg and Matt Fitzpatrick are in the same group, as are Viktor Hovland and rookie Rasmus Hojgaard and Tyrrell Hatton and Robert MacIntyre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy has reiterated his plan to continue to broaden his golfing horizons rather than get bogged down…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4106],"tags":[2826,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-412640","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115178986976317910","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}