It was a bad week in Memphis for Rory McIlroy.
McIlroy struggled his way through TPC Southwind and ended up finishing alone in 66th at 8-over for the week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. While he is safely into the BMW Championship next week — McIlroy entered the tournament at No. 12 in the FedExCup standings — it was McIlroy’s worst finish of the season by far.
“Obviously [I] didn’t come in here with a ton of reps,” McIlroy said on Sunday. “Almost felt like the more the week went on, the more I felt lost with my golf swing a little bit.”
McIlroy entered the PGA Tour’s postseason after a long break. He hadn’t competed since his T40 finish at the British Open in mid-July. And that showed.
McIlroy opened the tournament with a 4-over 74, and failed to break par in all four rounds. While he was already well out of contention at this point, McIlroy just looked out of it to start play on Sunday. He opened the final round with a double bogey on the first, and then went 5-over through the first six holes.
McIlroy entered the clubhouse almost dead last in both Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green and Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, too. His issues, he said, felt “overall.”
“I think as well when you’re sort of working through some stuff in your swing, I certainly do sometimes start to lose awareness of the target,” McIlroy said. “You start to make the golf swing more important than the golf shots sometimes, and that’s obviously not a good thing either.”
While it didn’t matter much, and he still ended the day with back-to-back bogeys, McIlroy did show some life on the back nine. He made five birdies in an eight-hole stretch on Sunday to finish up his 2-over 72.
“I hit some better shots coming in for sure,” he said. “Still a few loose ones as well, but five birdies coming in … definitely there's some signs of encouragement there.”
McIlroy ended up finishing 25 shots back from Scottie Scheffler, who secured an eight-shot win later on Sunday afternoon.
McIlroy has four top-10 finishes on Tour this season, which includes his second straight win at the Masters back in April. He’s made the cut in all 12 starts that he’s made this season, too, and entered the week at No. 2 in the Official World Golf Rankings behind only Scheffler.
While McIlroy has more than proven himself capable, he’s heading to St. Louis well off from where he wants to be.
“To me it’s more about obviously the execution of what I’m doing right now, and the execution wasn’t there this week,” McIlroy said. “As I said, I’m going to have to sort of put the head down and grind from now until Thursday to try to feel like I have any sort of chance next week.”