Rory McIlroy says a desire to take on “challenging things” can fuel further success in 2026 as he made a strong start to his season at the Dubai Invitational.<\/b><\/p>\n
The world number two completed a career Grand Slam with victory at the Masters last April. He later helped Europe win the Ryder Cup in New York, while he also triumphed at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Players Championship and Irish Open.<\/p>\n
In his first competitive outing of the year, McIlroy carded an opening five-under 66 to take the first-round lead at Dubai Creek Resort.<\/p>\n
Despite becoming just the sixth golfer to complete a career sweep of men’s majors, motivation remains high for McIlroy.<\/p>\n
“I like the work and like the process,” McIlroy told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
“I enjoy doing challenging things and I think if you can make that the important part and make it routine, you don’t need motivation to do it. It’s your lifestyle and what you do.<\/p>\n
“I guess it’s who you identify as and I identify as a hard worker and someone who likes to do those things.<\/p>\n
“The more you do that, the more it becomes who you are. I’ve done it for so long now that if I didn’t do it, it would feel pretty foreign.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy says a desire to take on “challenging things” can fuel further success in 2026 as he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4106],"tags":[2826,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-698406","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\/115901037720079790","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698406","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=698406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}