COGNIZANT CLASSIC

March 3, 2024

Rory McIlroy

PGA National Champion Course

Quick Quotes

Q. A little bit of a race to the finish for you guys in order to finish it up. Top-20 result. What do you take away from the week?

RORY McILROY: A week that could have been. I felt like most of my play was a bit better than what the result suggested. That bad hole on 16 yesterday, a few sloppy mistakes here and there. Overall the game seems to be trending in the right direction. I drove the ball great again this week. I led the field in strokes gained off the tee at Riv. Probably going to do that again this week.

That's the foundation of my game. When that's good, I just need some of the rest of the pieces to fall into play. Hopefully they can over the next couple weeks.

Q. You added this event, added Valero to be sharper. What have you seen so far?

RORY McILROY: Yeah, if anything I'm just learning sort of my patterns and learning how to manage my game a little bit. There's still a few misses in there, but at the same time, I know what those misses are, so I know how to manage it a little bit better.

It's been good. Looking forward to Bay Hill and looking forward to THE PLAYERS, too.

This has been a little stop-start since the Middle East, so looking forward to getting on a run of events here.

Q. Unless you really think about your week, you don't realize how hectic it is, you think about Monday playing at night, playing tomorrow. It's like eight straight days always something you have to do. What is it like to manage all that?

RORY McILROY: I'm really happy I got done today because it means to join my dad in the most important day of his year tomorrow at Seminole.

I guess it's the life that I wanted. It's the life that I've asked for. I'm not going to stand up here and complain. This is what I want to do. I like being busy.

I try to not -- no one likes being me more than me, so that's sort of the attitude that I like to go with. I'm busy, but I like being busy when it's stuff that I want to do.

Q. With Shane kind of in contention, you're obviously good buddies with him. Knowing he had a close call here a couple years ago and hasn't gotten in the winner's circle a ton the last couple years, what would a win mean for him?

RORY McILROY: It would mean a lot. He loves this place, and he's always played well at this golf course. I said to him earlier, at least it gets him out of the Monday pro-am at Bay Hill tomorrow, so he doesn't have to deal with that. I'd love to see him win. I'm going to be keeping a close eye and cheering for him, and hopefully he gets the job done.