Rory McIlroy has delivered verdicts on his motivation and enjoyment of golf ahead of the PGA Championship.
“I know how fortunate I am and so lucky to be in this position in life and sometimes you have to enjoy the perks because I know that this isn’t going to last forever,” McIlroy said.
“There’s going to be a day where I’m not sitting up here and I’m not competing for major championships and I’m not doing what I’m doing. So I guess while I’m doing it, I have to enjoy it.
“It’s been amazing, but there’s still a lot of things I want to achieve. But if I can enjoy it along the way, that’s a nice thing to do.
“I was tentatively planning to play Doral and then I got invited to that White House state dinner the night before on a Tuesday night, which I thought was a wonderful opportunity.
“I wanted to do the state dinner and if I was going to do that, it was probably better that I take that week to practise and prepare and come up here and see the golf course.”
Motivation was lacking for McIlroy this time last year, despite finally winning the Masters, but that is not the case for this year’s event.
“I need to take the time after the Masters to reset and decompress and get myself in the right mental space again to get myself up for this tournament and keep going for the US Open and the Open Championship.
“I think I came into this tournament last year a little bit sort of uncertain of what my future was – just like I conquered this thing that I wanted to conquer for so long and I was a little bit… I still hadn’t really reset goals or found whatever that motivation was to keep going or go forward and set myself goals for the rest of my career.
“Coming into this tournament feels a lot different than what it did last year. I feel like I’ve got some nice clear road ahead to try to get some more of these majors.”