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WGC BRIDGESTONE INVITATIONALJuly 29, 2014Rory McIlroyAKRON, OHIO THE MODERATOR: Rory, welcome. Thanks for joining us here at the WGC Bridgestone Invitational. I'm sure you will not get tired of being introduced as The Open champion. Give us a little bit of what you've been doing for the last week. RORY McILROY: It's actually‑‑ honestly, it's been pretty quiet. I had a couple of media things to do at the start of the week, and then I actually got straight back into sort of preparing for this week on Wednesday, did some fitness testing over in London. Did a corporate outing for one of my sponsors on Thursday, then flew to Florida on Friday and spent the week practicing and getting ready. I didn't‑‑ I haven't really sort of thought too much about it. I've obviously had a bit of time to reflect after The Open and everything, but just decided I wanted to move on and move forward. There's a lot of big tournaments left this year, a lot of golf left to play, and a lot of things I still want to achieve. So definitely wasn't going to dwell on what I'd done at Hoylake. And as I said, I want to move on and start by playing well again this week. Q. Rory, did you bring the Claret Jug with you, and could you maybe tell us about where it's been? RORY McILROY: Actually, I did bring it with me to Florida. I had a family friend come over yesterday, and I thought it would be nice for him to see it. That was basically the only reason. But, yeah, I've got it with me. I'll have it with me for the next couple of weeks. I'm probably going to head back home for a few days after the PGA. So it will stay there for a while. It's been‑‑ it's just sort of been sitting at my mom and dad's house for a few days. I took it out Monday night in Belfast with all of my buddies. We had a good time with it. Apart from that, yeah, it's just been‑‑ I've sort of been taking pictures of it sort of beside the TV and on top of the toilet and wherever it's been. I've been taking a few photos. It's been quite funny, sending them around to all my friends. It's definitely nice to have it in my possession. Q. Welcome back to Akron. RORY McILROY: Thank you. Q. A few months ago a writer from Sports Illustrated said those World Golf Championships in Tucson and Akron are stuck in such uninspired venues. I'd move them to places that are more dynamic. What's your response to that? RORY McILROY: Honestly, I mean, I can see where he's coming from in terms of Tucson‑‑ not because of the place, but just because of the golf course and sometimes the weather that we got there. Obviously, it got snow and frost and it can get a bit cold. But honestly, I think this is one of the best courses we play all year. I really look forward to this week. It's a great tournament for the players. I think all the players really enjoy it because of the atmosphere, because you're guaranteed four days of golf. It's on a great golf course. Guys just enjoy coming here and playing. It's a good test. I wouldn't say, okay, it's‑‑ you know, it's not like it's in a major city, but that's not what we're here for. We're here to play a golf tournament. We're here to try and win. I definitely don't think this tournament should move anywhere else. It's one of my favorite weeks of the year, and I think I can speak on behalf of a lot of other guys, and they'd say the same thing. Q. Rory, you said at Hoylake that you wake up thinking about golf and go to bed thinking about golf. Is it that kind of single‑mindedness that you absolutely have to have to play the kind of golf you have in the last month or two? RORY McILROY: Personally, for me, I think it is. Because it's what I've always done. It's what I've always known. That's been my life since I was sort of 10 years old was golf. It's not like I get‑‑ I think it's just waking up every morning with that drive to want to get better and to want to be the best. I talked about going to bed thinking about it as well, it's more about reflecting on what you've done that day. Have you become a better golfer than you were when you woke up that morning, or have you maybe not gotten better but made a step in the right direction to become a better player. That's what I really meant by that. But, yeah, that's the place that I'm in right now, and that's my main objective and my main focus. I feel like I'm playing well. I just want to continue to keep doing that. Q. A quick follow. Jack Nicklaus was asked last week can he see you challenging his record and what Tiger has done? He said it's up to you and whether you decide at one point can you keep that single‑mindedness, or do you just at some point want to lead a normal life? Can you see having this drive indefinitely into your 30's, that single‑mindedness, or do you think at some point you'll want to lead a more normal life? RORY McILROY: No, I definitely do. I want to‑‑ I didn't grow up wanting to lead a normal life. I grew up wanting to win major championships. I think you can still do both. You can still lead a relatively normal life. Like, obviously, always the week after winning a big tournament like The Open, it's going to be‑‑ that's abnormal. That's not something you're going to have to deal with week in and week out, but I think you can still have the drive and the dedication to try to become one of the best players ever and still do relatively normal things. I think it's become increasingly more difficult these days with social media and just‑‑ your life is just out there. But you can still‑‑ I just want to live my life the way I want to live it, and at the same time, I feel like I can still be dedicated enough and driven enough to try to become the best player that I can be. Q. Rory, you mentioned earlier not wanting to dwell on your win at Hoylake. After each of your first two major championship victories, you played very well afterwards and kept some momentum going. How difficult is it to stay hungry after a major win? And how are you able to do it? RORY McILROY: For me, it hasn't been that difficult because I always feel like winning a Major is almost a springboard in a way. Especially after the PGA at Kiawah, I didn't want to rest on that. I'd already had a pretty good year, but I wanted to just keep going. I set myself a goal. I want to win the FedExCup. I want to win the Race to Dubai. I want to keep that No.1 position in the world. I think every time you have success, you need to reassess your goals because it's only halfway, two‑thirds through the season, and a lot of the goals that I set myself for the start of the year, I've achieved already. So that's when you have to reassess and say like, okay, you've boxed that off. It's great. Celebrate it for a couple of days, but then you've got to move on. You've got to keep moving forward and keep thinking about what you want to achieve from now until the end of the year. And then at the end of the year, you can really reflect on everything you've done and enjoy it. So it's a springboard. I think you can just carry off‑‑ I feel like I've got a lot of momentum, and I can carry that through to the end of the year and hopefully ride that and play some really good golf and some golf similar to what you saw at Hoylake. Q. Rory, aside from maybe what you consumed out of the trophy, how is the aftermath different from the other two? And secondly, how do you kind of compare winning this Major to the previous two? What's the same about it? What's different? That sort of thing. RORY McILROY: I think just because it was The Open Championship and being from those islands where it's so important and there was‑‑ again, I didn't‑‑ after the PGA, I didn't go back home after. So I didn't really‑‑ and I was caught up. The Olympic games were on as well, so there were a lot of sports stories going on at that time, where it was‑‑ you go home on Monday, it was the biggest story of the day. It just felt just that little bit bigger. I felt like my fame or celebrity or whatever you want to call it just went up another notch after the win. So as I was kind of saying earlier, it's kind of something I'm going to have to handle from now on. But it's another major championship. It is The Open. It's the one that I dreamed about winning when I was a kid at Holywood Golf Club, holing all those putts to beat Tiger and beat Phil and beat Ernie. Again, I feel like I've done it. It's great to be introduced as The Open champion, but I need to move on from that and say I've got a lot more golf left this year, and I want to achieve a lot more. I'm enjoying being The Open champion, but that's not all I want to be this year. I want to do more. Q. Is that perspective different than the first two? RORY McILROY: It's definitely different than the U.S. Open. I could have taken the rest of 2011 off and been totally happy winning the first one. Winning the first one is just sort of a relief, especially how I did it. You know, after the Masters and everything, it was a bit of a weight off my shoulders. It feels pretty similar to the second one at the PGA because I set myself some goals after that that I wanted to achieve. I went ahead and nearly achieved them all. Didn't quite win the FedExCup, but apart from that, it was a really good year, and I achieved everything that I wanted to. Again, same thing, just reassess your goals and keep moving forward. Q. Rory, at the start of the year, if we can look to your schedule and put a circle around the other two events you would have won by August, we wouldn't necessarily have put Wentworth and The Open. RORY McILROY: No, indeed not. Q. Is this the week when you actually win an event you're supposed to win? RORY McILROY: I don't know. It does seem that this course is going to set up well for me this week. It's soft. It's a long golf course anyway, and it's playing just a bit longer with all the rain that they've had. It's a course that I've done pretty well on before and I feel comfortable on. These next two weeks here, at Valhalla as well, they're courses that should set up well for me. We'll see how it goes. I feel like my game's in good shape that I can definitely have a chance. Q. And the world No.1 is on the line. Is that something to focus your mind? Is that something you're even thinking of? RORY McILROY: Yeah, it is. World No.1 is a big goal of mine. I've never won a World Golf Championship. That's another thing. I've got three majors but never won one of these. That's another thing I'd like to knock off the list. So there's a lot of stuff still to play for. Q. Rory, having been focused on golf since age 10, in that early period, was there ever a crisis of faith or a teenage rebellion or anything that kind of separated you from the game or made you want to separate from the game? RORY McILROY: Yeah, I was ready to give it up when I was 16. I remember the drive. I just won the Mullingar Scratch Cup, and I remember the drive home with my dad. It was like a three‑hour drive. And I said to him, I don't like this anymore. I don't enjoy it. I just won, and I don't know, I'm not happy, I'm not excited. I went back home and didn't play golf for about three days. Actually, I really like this game. Just an impulsive teenager going through hormonal issues. But, yeah, that was like the only time. Apart from that, I love the game of golf. It's been great to me over the years, obviously. As I said, this is what I always wanted to do. I'm really enjoying it. But there was a teenage rebellion, yes, for three days. Q. In those three days, did it give you a sense of panic at all that here's this whole thing you built your life around and it's not giving you pleasure anymore? RORY McILROY: Not really. I look back on it, and my parents were actually so good. Look, Rory, we just want you to be happy and do whatever you want to and enjoy it. Probably on the inside they're saying, what's he thinking? What's he doing? Yeah, it was‑‑ there was no panic. It was just me being a grumpy teenager. Q. Rory, at Hoylake Tiger was asked about your play there, and he obviously was very complimentary, but he also said that, when you're on, you're on, and when you're off, you're really off. RORY McILROY: Off? Q. Yeah, you're off a little bit. We kind of alluded to it here a little bit, but what is the missing piece that keeps you from being more consistent or maybe as consistent as you'd like to be? RORY McILROY: I think for me it's all a mental thing. If I can get myself in the right frame of mind week in, week out, and give myself some little mental triggers throughout the week, like I did at The Open Championship. Then hopefully, I'll have a lot more of those on weeks. I mean, everyone's going to have bad weeks. It's inevitable. It's going to happen. We're not machines or robots. We're human beings, and it's just hard to keep that level up for an extended amount of time. Tiger has obviously done it. He was at the top of the game for‑‑ I don't know how many years in a row. I guess like 10. For 10, 12, 15 years in a row. But, again, he still had bad weeks, or whatever a bad week was for him, 10th or whatever. I think that's just the thing that I'd like to do a little bit more of, make my bad weeks a little better. So instead of a missed cut, at least grind it out and try and finish in the top ten or whatever it is. Everyone goes through their ups and downs. It's the game of golf. There's plenty of players that would like to be as inconsistent as me. I don't mind with‑‑ I'm not afraid of my inconsistencies. It's something that I actually quite welcome, and I know that my good is very good and my bad can sometimes be very bad. At the end of the day, it all levels out. I'll have my good weeks, and I'll have my bad weeks. But definitely, if you said there's one thing I'd like to get better at, it would just be a little bit more consistency in there. Hopefully, I'm on the right path to try and do that. Q. Rory, so many of the greats of the game kind of have Jack Nicklaus' 18 majors in their sights at some point, whether they verbalize it or articulate it. I'm wondering just where that is in your goal list and whether you think it's attainable for yourself or for anybody else. RORY McILROY: It's not something I ever thought about or dreamed of. The next number in my head is four. I've won three of them. I'd like to win my fourth, and that's it, and just try and keep going like that, just one after the other. And if it adds up to whatever number it adds up to in my career, then that's great. I don't want to put that pressure on myself.  I don't want to put that burden of a number to try and attain. As I said, you need goals, but that's obviously‑‑ that's too much of a long‑term goal. I'd like to set like shorter‑term goals in terms of, even if it's trying to improve something in my game because then all those little short‑term goals will help you achieve the long‑term goal in the end. The only number I'm worried about at the minute is four. Q. Have you always felt that way, or is that something you've come to watching the way it's played out for Tiger? RORY McILROY: I've always thought that way. I've never put a number on it. I've never‑‑ I know how many majors the greats of the game have won. But I never wanted to compare myself. I never wanted because it's not‑‑ if I go on to win whatever number it is, then that's great. At least at the end of my career, there's not going to be a disappointment. Oh, I wanted to get to 15, but I only got 12, bummer. You still got 12 majors, you know what I mean? I just don't want to end my career like that. I'd love to end my career with 12 majors, but I don't want it to be a disappointment. Q. I'm just curious, did your dad's buddies spend their money yet? RORY McILROY: I'm sure they're in the process of it. It is 7:20 at home. So I'm sure the bars are open, trying to spend it. Q. I'm just curious, though, when you take the Claret Jug to Belfast, are you afraid to take your eyes off of it? RORY McILROY: A little bit. When it's sort of being passed around, yeah. But, no, it's okay. If you're just in the company of your friends and people that you trust, it's fine. I was sharing a story. Keegan was sharing a story with me today, whenever he won the PGA, he went to a bar near where we live in Palm Beach Gardens, and he said he was letting everyone in the bar drink out of it. And I was like, I know the people who hang out there. I wouldn't let them drink out of that. But it's cool to be able to share some of these stories with him. Q. Rory, it's been almost two years on now since the Ryder Cup and the whole almost being late. I was just wondering does anybody still at this point give you any grief, your friends, family, about that whole thing, if you have an example. And also, can you just maybe articulate, even this late, about what maybe you were thinking sitting in that police car. What was going through your mind that day? It must have been a jumble of thoughts. RORY McILROY: Yeah, of course I still hear about it. Of course people still give me grief about it. Central Time, Eastern Time, yes, it's different. I know. I was in my hotel room, and then I had a couple of missed calls. And I was like, why are they ringing me? I've got like two hours before my tee time. And then I started to get ready and stuff, and then I got a knock on the door from one of the European Tour people, and they're like, you've got half an hour before your tee time. Obviously, I panicked, and I got ready as soon as I could. They said, look, we've got everything organized. The thing that I was worried about was letting the team down. We were already in a bad position. It was 10‑6, and the last thing they needed was me to have to forfeit a game because I was late. I was lucky. I was lucky I got there to the course, and I just kept telling myself, once I got there and knew I was going to make it, I was just saying, let's try and keep it together for the first six holes, like keep it to all square or even just 1 down or something, but just try to keep it tight for the first six. And then after that, I was calmed down, and like I'll be able to get into some sort of rhythm. Ended up I was 2 up after six, and then I was like, well, this is actually okay. And it ended up that it was the best golf I played of the whole week. I shot 65 or 66. I was 6 under par for the match. I beat Keegan, who was arguably one of the best players for the U.S. team that week. But I was panicking. I really was. It was more if it was an individual competition and it was just myself that I was going to let down, then I would have been fine, but because it wasn't just me that was going to have the disappointment of showing up late, it was 11 other guys on the team and the captain and the vice captains. So it was a pretty scary moment. It all worked out in the end. Q. Are you aware, has Keegan ever said to you that he wasn't going to let them get a point, he was just going to sit there and wait; has he ever said that to you? RORY McILROY: No, not really. I guess it was probably a little bit weird for him as well because whenever I got up onto the 1st tee, he said, is everything okay? He thought maybe something was wrong. I said, no, no, I'm fine. Let's play. He was‑‑ Keegan was there like two hours before getting the crowd riled up on the 1st tee and all that stuff, so he probably spent a lot of energy doing that. Yeah, I just wanted to‑‑ if I could just keep it tight for the first six holes, then it was okay. It all worked out in the end. But it was‑‑ I'll never make that mistake again. Q. On the Ryder Cup subject, Rory, can you quantify the year thatBernhard Langer has had and maybe worthy of a captain's pick down the line. RORY McILROY: What he's done this year, especially last week winning the U.S. Senior Open by 13 shots, it was impressive. The thing I would be slightly apprehensive of, if you were to bring him into the team environment, the European team, a few of the guys would have played with him, like the more experienced guys, but he's not quite in the same group of people. Like it's‑‑ I think the team dynamic is pretty good at the minute with the mix that we've got, and to bring someone in that hasn't spent much time around us or those guys mightn't be the best, but he's obviously playing great golf. It's sort of hard to‑‑ because he's not playing against the regular guys week in and week out, but he's playing great golf obviously, and what he's done this year and this month as well has been fantastic. I'd say probably, if they were to be involved in the Ryder Cup, if they were vice captains or something, then I'd be all for that, but I don't think they should be on the team. THE MODERATOR: Rory, thanks very much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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