Rory McIlroy will be in Memphis when the FedExCup Playoffs begin with next week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship.
The PGA Tour announced Friday afternoon that McIlroy has committed to the 70-man field, one year after he skipped the playoff opener at TPC Southwind.
The field will be finalized upon the conclusion of this week’s Wyndham Championship.
McIlroy previously competed in three straight FedEx St. Jude Championships starting in 2022, the same year the Tour relocated The Northern Trust. He missed the cut that first year before finishes of T-3 and T-68. He only played two events at TPC Southwind when the course hosted the FedEx St. Jude Classic, a regular-season event. He was T-29 in 2010 and T-7 two years later.
McIlroy’s Memphis return will mark his 12th start of the season on Tour. He’ll enter the tournament at No. 12 in the FedExCup standings thanks mostly to his Masters victory, T-2 at the Genesis Invitational, and top-10s at the PGA Championship and Genesis Scottish Open.
Even with three playoff starts, McIlroy won’t meet the 15-event minimum this season – he skipped three signature events this season – though as The Daily Drive’s Bob Harig previously reported, the Tour can reduce such requirement due to “medical reasons or other extraordinary circumstances.”
After last month’s Open Championship, McIlroy was asked if it was fair to say that the FedExCup doesn’t get his “juices flowing” like it used to.
“Yeah, that’s fair,” McIlroy, 37, responded, before expounding:
“I think it just sort of ebbs and flows,” he added. “There’s been years where I’ve given [the Tour] maybe more of my attention and years that I haven’t. Yeah, I guess I’m just at a stage that I have other things that I prioritize. Again, the PGA Tour is in a lot of flux at the minute with a lot of their schedule and structure and everything like that. So, I think the change where it doesn’t matter where you are in the top 30 going into the Tour Championship, it’s like I just need to be in the top 30 going in there to have a chance to win a FedEx Cup. So why would I care about the first two? I sort of came to that decision last year, and I’m just sort of doing the same thing.”