Rory McIlroy isn’t dismissing his 2019 achievements just because he failed to win a major.
He also isn’t sure he’s happy with golf’s revamped schedule and order of events.
Speaking ahead of the Omega European Masters in Switzerland, McIlroy defended a three-win season that saw him walk away from East Lake with $15 million, the FedExCup and the Vardon Trophy.
“I feel that if I keep doing the things I’m doing, sooner or later I’ll get another [major] and all this noise will then go away,” McIlroy said, per The Telegraph.
“However, if the narrative becomes that the majors are the only important thing in golf, then that’s dangerous because are fans not going to care for the other 48 weeks of the year?”
McIlroy won four major championships in four years from 2011-14 but now finds himself in the midst of a five-year drought.
The PGA Championship’s move from August to May produced a golf calendar that included a major each month from the Masters in April to The Open in July, but McIlroy – one green jacket short of the career grand slam – would like to put a bit more distance between the game’s biggest events.
“If they are spaced so closely together will fans only care from the second week of April to the third week in July?” he added to the BBC. “I’d like to see them spaced out like tennis does. With the Australian Open in January and the US Open going on now, they’ve a nice nine-month window of relevancy.”
In separate scheduling news, the Travelers Championship announced Wednesday that McIlroy has already committed to next season’s event, which follows the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. Assuming McIlroy plays the Memorial – as he has every year, barring injury, since 2010 – and defends at the RBC Canadian Open, then the Ulsterman is looking at playing four events in a row in June. An additional start at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude in Memphis would make The Open Championship at Royal St. George’s his sixth start in eight weeks.
Then come the Olympics in Tokyo and the FedExCup Playoffs.
As for this week, McIlroy is grouped with Lee Westwood and Matt Wallace for the first two rounds in Switzerland.