Rory McIlroy Doesn’t Want the Masters to be His Final “Great Moment”

Rory McIlroy is now part of the most exclusive club in golf—Career Grand Slam winners—but it’s seemingly come with more questions than answers.

Some thought—including myself—that his decade-long quest to capture the Green Jacket would, to use a cliché term, open the floodgates. That he would now run off four, five, six more majors in the next couple of years.

Weirdly, it’s felt like it’s done the opposite.

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The Northern Irishman has been searching for a reason, for a purpose on the golf course. And, to be honest, it makes a lot of sense. He’d been chasing a single goal for the last 10 years, and now that he’s finally done it, he doesn’t know where to go.

But on Wednesday, he finally said something that points toward a once-again motivated Rory McIlroy.

“I think I do feel a little clearer,” he said prior to this week’s Genesis Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club. “It's amazing what ten days or two weeks of just a little bit of detachment can do for you, and sitting there being with your own thoughts for a while. Yeah, look, there's other—I don't want (the Masters) to be my last great moment in the game. There's plenty more that I can do.

“I feel like I've kept banging on this drum all of this year, I feel like I'm a better player now than I ever have been. And there's so many opportunities that lie ahead and whether that's Portrush next week or The Open going back to St Andrews or a U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. There's all these great venues that all the greats have won on, and I'd love to add my name to those lists, as well.”

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The Northern Irishman’s legacy in this game is established. There’s a pretty good argument to be had that he’s now the greatest European to ever touch a golf club. But now it’s time to build on it.

And I couldn’t think of a better way to do it than holding the Claret Jub high above his head in Northern Ireland next Sunday afternoon.

A win at Royal Portrush would put an exclamation point on the greatest year of his career—a Ryder Cup win on foreign soil wouldn’t be the worst Plan B, either.