As he nears the end of his most personally satisfying season yet, Rory McIlroy said he’s content with what he has accomplished in the game.
But that doesn’t mean he’s finished.
Closing on in a seventh season-ending Race to Dubai title on the DP World Tour, McIlroy said that his hunger to compete hasn’t waned. He is now just channeling it differently.
“I don’t think my desire’s gone. It’s certainly not gone,” he told reporters Tuesday at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai. “I think it’s just going to be one of those things where I’m going to have to pick and choose where to sort of place my desire and what I want my goals to be.
“I’m certainly not less driven, but maybe just more driven in focused areas. I don’t feel like chasing as much anymore. I’m not out chasing the Grand Slam. I’m not chasing these things. I’m still driven to do more, but it’s sort of a pinpoint to drive in certain directions. I have a clear head and I’m out of all the political stuff in golf, basically, and I can just focus on playing and playing where I want to and making myself competitively happy by playing in the tournaments that I want to play.”
Another factor is that he wants to travel with his family, and to show his 5-year-old daughter different parts of the world and cultures.
“Doing things like that,” he said, “I think is a very nice place to be in life.”
With the career Grand Slam locked up, McIlroy has already said that he is planning to scale back his schedule even further, owing to his age (36) and desire to play at a high level for the next decade. Those cutbacks are likely to appear more in his PGA Tour schedule than the DP World Tour, where, with another strong performance this week in Dubai, he will move past Seve Ballesteros and claim his seventh season-long title, just one shy of Colin Montgomerie’s all-time mark.
“There’s a wonderful heritage to this tour,” McIlroy said. “I think with the fractured nature of the men’s professional game at the minute, this tour needs all of its stars to step up and play in the big events. I understand that I am one of those people, and I want to do my utmost to help in whatever way that I can. I feel quite a responsibility to do that, and to try to make this tour as strong as it can possibly be.”
One reminder of his enduring legacy came Tuesday with the unveiling of the Rory McIlroy Award, which will be given to the European tour player who performs the best in the major championships that season.
Fortunately for the rest of the tour, McIlroy would be ineligible to win it.