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ABU DHABI HSBC CHAMPIONSHIPJanuary 16, 2018Rory McIlroyAbu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates MICHAEL GIBBONS: Welcome, everyone and Rory to the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship presented by EGA. Always a pleasure, Rory, to welcome you. RORY McILROY: Thank you. Good to be back. MICHAEL GIBBONS: I know you've done a few interviews already this morning, but just give us a sense of how you're feeling and going into the week. RORY McILROY: Yeah, look, I'm excited to be back at a golf tournament. It's been a while. You know, the last few months have been really nice just to concentrate on a few things I needed to take care of in terms of getting myself fit and healthy to come back and sharpen up a few things in my game. Obviously this is the first real test of getting back and seeing how I am. So I'm looking forward to just getting out there and seeing how I perform when I need to. It's a place I've done well before and obviously a golf course I know well, so it's a comfortable place to come back and make a fresh start of the year. MICHAEL GIBBONS: Get this out of the way; how is the old ticker? RORY McILROY: It's doing okay. It's all right. (Laughter). Just monitor my salt intake, I'll be all right. Q. You look at though you've trimmed down, if that's the right word. You look thinner than when we last saw you. RORY McILROY: I've actually put on about two kilos since October. But obviously that's two good kilos. Yeah, I've lost a bit of fat and you've put on a bit of muscle. Yeah I've been in the gym training hard and getting myself fit and healthy for this year. Yeah, taking the diet a little more seriously and started working with a dietician. Yeah, just trying to be a little more diligent on that side. Q. What's the most exciting thing for you this year? Is it married life? Is it the Masters? Is it The Ryder Cup? Is it your health? What is it, as you look forward to, 2018? RORY McILROY: Ryder Cup year is obviously something that you always look forward to, especially after what happened at Hazeltine a couple of years ago. Excited to hopefully be on that team and try to get a Ryder Cup win for Europe or be a part of that. Majors are obviously very exciting. I think that the venues for the majors this year are very strong. Obviously with Shinnecock for the U.S. Open, Carnoustie for The Open and Bellerive for the PGA; so really strong golf courses for the four majors. And yeah, my health, healthy feel really good about where I'm at with that. I've sort of put all that behind me which has been great. So just excited to get out there and play a pretty full and busy schedule. So yeah, those are probably the three things I'm looking forward to the most. Q. Do you feel healthier than this time last year? RORY McILROY: Oh, yeah. I couldn't play this time last year. I was injured. Q. So you probably do. RORY McILROY: (Laughter). Q. You just mentioned diet and taking it a bit more seriously. After the British Masters, you said you went for testing and that was going to be part of it. Just wonder what you found out during that testing about diet and whatnot and what to eat and that sort of stuff? RORY McILROY: Yeah, it's sort of common sense. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of an input from another area or someone else to make you aware of things. I mean, geez, like I did a lot of blood profiles and a couple of things just in terms of different Omegas, like my Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio wasn't great. So I was talking about six fish oil tablets a day for the last couple months and trying to get that ratio back in check; that's good for inflammation. And all sorts of stuff, and then obviously eating better. So yeah, just be a little more careful about what I'm putting into my body and obviously that can dictate energy levels and all that stuff, so just trying to keep on top of it. Q. Your first official press conference in 104 days. Are you a bit nervous? RORY McILROY: No. Wish I could have extended it -- no, I'm joking. No, I'm good. Geez, I've talked to you guys for ten years at least, so I'm pretty comfortable up here in front of you. Q. Can you just tell us if you have changed anything in this period of 100-odd days that you were not playing competitive golf, has anything changed? Have you done any tinkering with your equipment or anything like that? RORY McILROY: So since the last time I've played, I got a new driver, a new fairway wood in the bag. Got a new lob-wedge in the bag, as well. Apart from that, no, not really. Everything else is pretty much the same. Worked on a few things in my swing. Feel like I've made a couple of improvements there. Apart from that, that's really it. Q. Could you give us a brief recap of what's happened over the last 104 days, perhaps when you started playing golf again, and something you've done away from golf that's really captured your imagination? RORY McILROY: Do you want day by day? (Laughter). So it's been nice, after the Dunhill, Erica and I took a nice trip to Italy for a week and did a road trip around Italy in a 1950s convertible Mercedes, so that was really nice. Then yeah, basically, I came out to the Middle East for four and a half weeks. Sort of back end, last two weeks of October and first sort of 2 1/2, three weeks of November. That's when I started to sort of rehab and tentatively hit balls again. I think I played one round of golf when I was here, and that was it. I wasn't really hitting many woods or drivers at that point. Then I went back to the States for two weeks over Thanksgiving, sort of the week of Thanksgiving and the week after, and then that's when I started to ramp it up a little bit. So that would have been maybe four -- so I probably gave myself about four weeks after the Dunhill of not hitting a golf shot, and then I just sort of started by going day by day, 50-yard shots, 75, 100 and just building it up that way. Then sort of back end of November, start of December, is when I started to play and practise a bit more, and it's felt great since then. Then yeah, obviously over the Christmas and new year period, just kept it ticking over, even when there was a bit of snow in Belfast, just trying to keep on top of it and hit balls every day. Then yeah, I came back out here on the fifth of January. I've been here for ten days and practising and playing, so it's been nice. It's been a nice consistent stretch of practise, training, nothing else, really. I mean, obviously we had that trip to Italy, spent Christmas in New York, spent New Year's at Ashford Castle. So I've still been able to do some nice things in between but still just always keeping on top of what I need to do. Q. Obviously when you win again, it will be a big deal. Do you have to guard against any kind of rush of anxiety to get that victory, given all that's happened since your last one? RORY McILROY: Yeah, I'd love to win again. I don't think there's any better feeling than winning a golf tournament. But I don't feel like it's that far away. Obviously I've practised and I've played. Obviously not competitively in a proper tournament, but I've shot some really good scores over the past few weeks, and obviously it's different doing that to being out here on Thursday and really having a card in your hand. But from everything that I've seen in practise and playing over the past few weeks, there's no reason to think that it's not that far away. Q. I know you don't want to dwell on thing about the ticker, but could you just tell us how it first came to light? Were there symptoms or did you go for a checkup? RORY McILROY: Yeah, so I went for a checkup in April this year, and just a regular ECG, sort of put you on the treadmill and they, whatever, yeah, like tiny little -- your heartbeat has two big spikes, and then a tiny little spike at the end, and that little spike at the end was the other way, inverted. So basically, it's nothing, and once they ramped my heart rate up to 140, 150 beats per minute, that started to go the right way again, so it was totally fine. Got that checked, and it was something that sort of said, let's take an MRI of the heart and see what's on. They just said, have a bit of a thickening in the hard wall, nothing really a big deal, just something you have to keep on top of, and that was really it. Q. You haven't had symptoms, shortage of breath or anything that made you think you needed to get a checkup? RORY McILROY: No, not at all. Geez, no. Q. Back to golf. Dustin Johnson very impressive in Hawai'i. Were you looking at that thinking, the competitive juices flowing even more? RORY McILROY: Yeah, look, I've had a chance to watch a lot of golf over the past -- I watched a little bit of Italy because I was in Italy at the time; so watched Tyrrell do his thing there. Watched China, watched Turkey, watched Nedbank, watched Dubai, watched Tiger's tournament. So yeah, I've watched a lot of golf and I've kept an eye on what everyone's doing. It's exciting times. DJ's playing great. Obviously Justin Thomas has had a great year last year. I think he's going to continue to play very, very well. Obviously Jordan's always up there; Tiger making a comeback; JR doing what he did at the end of the year was really good; Tommy. Yeah, there's a lot of good players playing well at the minute. I'm excited to hopefully get back in the mix of that and see what I can do. Q. What do you feel you need to take from the next two weeks to give yourself the positivity and confidence going forward for the rest of the season? RORY McILROY: Yeah, I think the next two weeks will be a big learning curve, just to see where I'm at. I'm obviously coming into the events trying to play as well as I can and trying to compete and trying to win, but I think there will definitely be things -- I'll walk away from the two events and I'll have things to work on and maybe think about going into that stretch in the States. I can't really answer what I want to walk away with, but I think it will be quite revealing the next two weeks to see where I'm at with my game. Q. Last year after the Dunhill, can you give us an idea mentally. Physically, you were hurting, but mentally, where were you at that point and where are you now and what are you thinking now? RORY McILROY: Honestly, I was excited to be done. I could have shut it down after the PGA Championship last year very easily and taken the rest of the year off, but I didn't. I played six events after that and, you know, actually -- or five events. Played okay. I had a chance to win one of them. But I was just excited to take that time off and get myself just sort of reset. You know, so that's mentally where I was after the Dunhill. After that 3 1/2 months of a reset, I'm very happy to be back. I felt like I needed it physically and mentally. I've been out here for ten years and it just felt like it was a little bit of a sabbatical. Take a bit of sabbatical; I've been out here for ten years, get ready for the next ten, and I will feel like I've done that which is really nice. Q. The physical aspect of not being up, how much does it affect mentally? RORY McILROY: Massively. I had this chat, I was speaking to Paul McGinley the other day, and if you physically don't feel like you can do what you need to do, then mentally -- like so for example, I couldn't really hit many balls the sort of second half of last year. I'd go and play and I wouldn't hit balls after the round. I would warm-up for maybe 30 minutes before the round and that was it. That's all I was doing. Didn't really practise much between tournaments because I couldn't. I was just trying to rest and trying to keep myself going. So that mentally gets you because every time you turn up at an event, you don't feel prepared. You don't feel like you've done enough work to be ready and then even if you do get yourself in contention, almost feel a bit guilty that you're there because you haven't done the work. So mentally, I just wasn't in a great place, and that was because of where I was physically. So that's been really nice now to be unrestricted in practise and do what I've needed to do and feel like I've put the body of work in so that when I go to tournaments, I feel prepared and I feel ready and I feel ready to challenge. Q. Do you empathise more with what Tiger had to go through after what you had to go through? RORY McILROY: Oh, yeah, I've only been through five per cent of what he's had to go through. And you can tell like from where he was to where he is now mentally because of physically where he is; he's a totally different person. Of course I empathise with him, and I know he was in a dark place there for awhile. It's just so great to see him out of that and back and excited to be playing golf again. But yeah, I feel like I sort of know what he felt like but it was probably times a hundred. Q. There has been over the last few months a very strong wave of renewed confidence coming this way from the Americans as far as The Ryder Cup is concerned and the emergence of players and all that sort of thing. Sitting here now, well, indeed, sitting on the sidelines so to speak over the last few months, where do you think the balance lies? RORY McILROY: Look, the Americans are very strong, and I think for the first time in a long time, they have a real cohesion. All the younger guys get along great. Jordan, J.T., Rickie, Brooks, DJ, Patrick Reed, Daniel Berger, they all get on really, really well. There's a real core group of players there, young players, that will be around for a long time. So they are going to be very strong. But if you look at Hazeltine last time and how they set that golf course up: Big wide fairways, no enough, pins in the middle of greens; it wasn't set up for the way the Europeans like to play. I think Paris will be a completely different kettle of fish, so I think it will be so different. So I'm confident. I obviously need to make the team first, but everything being all well and good, I'll be on that team and I feel like we'll have a really good chance. Yeah, the Americans have been obviously very buoyant about their chances and whatever, but you know, it's never as easy as that, even when Europe was winning six of eight or five of seven en, whatever it was, they were all closer than -- overall, yes, Europe won and it looked dominant for a while, but the matches were always closer than that. The Ryder Cup's always close. It always comes down to a few key moments, and it will be no different in Paris. But I think we'll have a great team and it definitely won't be as easy as they think it's going to be. Q. You touched on diet, but there's obviously been quite a lot of self-analysis over the last few months. Was there anything major you stumbled on that you thought, I need to do that a little differently going forward, or even something that you got a way from that you did when you were younger that you now think you have to go back towards doing? RORY McILROY: Yeah, there's been a few different things, like I'm going to try to get to golf tournaments a bit earlier again. So I came here yesterday, played nine holes on Monday. I went through a few years there of, obviously I had gotten to know a lot of the golf courses I played, but I'd turn up on Tuesday afternoon, hit a few balls, play the Pro-Am on Wednesday and go. Sometimes I feel that's not the best preparation. I felt like being able to practise at home on the Monday and Tuesday morning was maybe a better use of my time. But I think looking back on it, I'm going to try to get to golf tournaments a little bit earlier again, try to get in on Monday, and it just gives you an extra day to prepare on the course, get used to green speeds, rough lengths, firmness of everything, all that different stuff, because each week obviously the golf course changes quite a bit. So going to try to get to golf tournaments a bit earlier. That's something that I've sort of, you know, looking back on things that I want to do a bit differently. So that's getting back to something I've done in the past. Q. These eight tournaments you've got before the Masters, do you need to return to the winner's circle to give yourself the best chance when you get to Augusta? RORY McILROY: I don't need to but I'd love to. I don't think I need to but I'd love to. I mean, it would be ideal if I were to win one of these next eight events or whatever, hopefully not just one. Yeah, it would be great for my confidence going into Augusta. But even if that doesn't happen, hopefully I can take a lot of confidence away from things that I've seen in my game, maybe even if the results don't quite come my way, even last year, like I finished fourth -- or second in South Africa, fourth in Bay Hill, seventh in México. So I still felt like there was some decent results there going in, so I took a little bit of confidence from that, but I'd love to. It's been, what is it, 14, 15, 16 months since I won, so I'd love to get back in the winner's circle as soon as possible. MICHAEL GIBBONS: Rory, as always, thank for joining us. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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