Rory McIlroy’s career | The Long Game | PGA TOUR Originals

Rory McIlroy’s dedication to both body and mind has been the cornerstone of a historic career. He is just the sixth man to complete the career Grand Slam. ‘Rory: The Long Game’ looks at the longevity and resilience that McIlroy has displayed over the past two decades as he has transformed from a teenage phenom to one of the legends of the game.

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[Music] welcome to the big time you’re going to be watching him for a long long time golf at its finest my name is Rory Mroy and I’m 21 years old basically over half of my lifetime I’ve been a pro golfer that blend of youth and power i’ve learned how to handle winning big events and carrying myself forward the finest player in the world when he first came out here as a skinny 19-year-old you see Mroy who’s developed a physique now that was the reason I got in the gym was for longevity at his brilliant best again if I play well in a sustained period then that will take care of everything else he is a different class i think that’s probably a part of the reason why my longevity and consistency has been what it’s been it’s been a great start to the year i felt like I got a little bit of momentum coming out of the 24 season and then I’ve been able to carry that into the first few months of this year rory’s historic 2025 season is a testament to his resilience a series of heartbreaks in the preceding years only propelled him to reach new heights look for this to carry over 300 and the rest 338 meet him and Shane ty going in the back nine and then it’s like the switch flipped and he’s hitting every drive right down the middle controlling his wedges beautifully it’s an eagle for M there’s some venues in our game that just mean a little bit more than others pebble Beach has a popular champion [Applause] he was just getting started mroyy’s next target was TPC Srass as he continued to raise the bar in a banner year in 2024 Rory realized that there was some holes in his golf swing so while the rest of golf was taking time off during the offseason he was cleaning up some technical stuff that I think transformed his ball striking all of that talent in Maroyy’s body is going to end up winning this championship i’ve had to learn to play this golf course and adapt my game to it in some ways got another player’s title he now had two wins in his first five starts of 2025 to think that I’ve won this now for you know a couple of times and you know I’ve been coming here since 2009 10year-old Roy would think this is really really cool and then two starts later a childhood dream was achieved at the Masters he finally dawned the green jacket in his 17th start at Augusta National there is the Mast’s champion Rory Mroy it was the final leg of the career Grand Slam coming 11 years after his last major he was just the sixth player to complete the slam and the first since Tiger Woods in 2000 in his Mast’s win Rory displayed the resilience that has defined his career now there’s rarely a group that I play in where I’m not the oldest person in that group so yeah longevity is something that I’m super proud of that I’ve been a professional golfer for 18 high quality years rory’s golfing life began with humble roots in Hollywood Northern Ireland where his success seemed written in the stars have a big swing big swing from the age of like six or seven years old I would tell everyone I was going to be the best golfer in the world i realized that I was better than most of the kids out there and sometimes I probably let it get to my head a little bit when I was younger some people have a gift rory’s not exactly 6’5 if you could measure if you could weigh talent he’s a heavyweight always has been as a teenager he was the one guy in Europe they talked about i said doesn’t have the record that Tiger Woods had at 19 but I reckon this young man swings the golf club better than Tiger did and within 18 months of turning pro he earned his first win on the DP World Tour rory entered the top 20 in the world ranking before turning 20 and opportunities on the PGA Tour soon followed okay Rory thanks very much for coming and joining us how are you feeling looking forward to your debut it’s great to be over here the course is in great shape and looks like it’s going to be a good week welcome to America thank you very much thanks guys cheers but just as things were taking off on tour a lingering injury was cause for concern when I was 18 or 19 I had a herniated disc L4 L5 and I was told that my career could only last a handful of years this was a reality check for Rory and in some ways a weird blessing in disguise because it forced Rory to shift his lifestyle i’ve always been very flexible which gives me a lot of speed through the ball that’s where I get all my distance from but I’ve started working on stability cuz I put so much load on my lower back during my golf swing middle of 2010 I realized that this isn’t going to get any better unless I start to take care of myself better so getting in the gym eating better as he started getting in the gym it started giving him the strength to support all this flexibility and suddenly he was more in control of his own body and in control of the golf club from Belfast Northern Ireland please welcome Rory Maroy [Music] that’s seven birdies and an eagle to win a golf tournament the way I did you sort of need to have that little bit of naivity of youth or like innocence to not really understand what you’re doing is pretty special how about making it good cool he does indeed welcome to the big time Rory Mroy while Rory’s rise was just beginning his resilience was tested at the 2011 Masters where he shot a final round 80 to lose a four- stroke lead on the last day I was trying to be someone else that I wasn’t i was trying to be hyperfocused not look at anyone not talk to anyone that’s where it went wrong for me it was disastrous and something that leaves a mark for a lot of players for me it was am I ever going to get that opportunity again the mentality I had after that was let’s try to get yourself back in that position as quickly as possible and see if you’ve learned from your mistakes but again resilience there he goes to the next major wins by eight at the US Open congressional is a great golf course and he just took it to its knees and everybody was left in the dust rory fit the bill he won in a similar way to Tiger Woods it’s great for the game of golf and I’m proud to be a part of the so-called new era and you know trying to you know bring golf to new people and make it cool he was golf’s new phenom and measuring stick his dedication to body and mind was about to bring even more success i always correlated fitness and getting in shape and making my health a priority with playing my best golf and that’s why I’ve continued to do that since definition of greatness in sport especially golf is longevity if you can last a decade or a decade plus you’re special if you can do a decade and a half nearly two decades like Rory Maroy you’re great need to stay healthy most of all you got to have the hunger and the drive to continuously work on your game even when you sink there’s not much room to get better we know every player no matter who it is has ups and downs in their careers but because he’s a true champion he’ll always fight through it you got to have perseverance the ones who work at it work at it hard and believe in themselves to come out the other end the biggest key to Rory’s longevity is that he’s really transformed himself from a talent early in his career to this elite athlete in 2012 Rory Mroy took his physique to a new level and became his generation’s model of fitness his transformation was a catalyst for his career and the cornerstone for his sustained success started to get into a little bit of Olympic lifting snatches cleans squats lunges bench press he became a different athlete became a real athlete he has ascended to the top of the world at the age of 22 pga championship broke Nicholas’s record margin of victory it was a great week at Kila being able to separate yourself from a major championship field and you know winning by eight his fifth PGA Tour title at the age of 23 i’m getting to that stage where you know I’m thinking you well this is what I should be doing i should be lifting a trophy at the end of the week rory Maroy has won back-to back playoff events i’m going to try and keep the run going for as long as possible rory Mroy at his brilliant best again he won three consecutive tournaments in 2014 including two majors he now had three legs of the career grand slam at just 25 years old winning the Open Championship especially as a player from that part of the world it’s probably the biggest win of of my career 2012 to 2014 is that coming of age where he realizes not just potential it’s the reality of it i remember that being a pivotal moment but then a pressurized moment because it’s what next my 2015 has been an interesting year it started pretty well won a couple of times the world number one outlasts them all the finest player in the world put together all he needed to do today after that my season was sort of derailed had an injury missed a good chunk of the summer people would say it was it’s just an ankle injury they healed i remember talking to his trainer at that specific time and I said “How bad is it?” He said “It’s bad.” Mroy persevered and continued his winning ways in 2016 everybody was wondering when Rory was going to be the old Rory this week he was indeed classic Rory Mroy no way including another monumental first rory Mroy wins the FedEx Cup 17 it was quieter and I think it was becoming clear that need another major need another major there’s been other things because of the ankle injury in 15 or the ribb injury in 17 that I’ve had to tweak here and there just to try to manage those things rory’s fitness was pivotal as he overcame injuries while putting up notable results however in 2017 he went winless worldwide for the first time in nearly a decade it was the first time there was a a lot of negativity that was focused at him personally and his game people would nitpick and then he stopped winning the majors that was piling pressure on week in week out that I think was a burden for Rory and it was starting to build there important lessons were still to be learned throughout both the lows and the highs rory Mroy continued to evolve and some of the greatest years of his career were yet to come whoop is a tool that by focusing on sleep and recovery along with exercise it gets athletes in a mindset of what can I do to perform better for longer rory Mroy is one of the first players on the PGA Tour to really embrace and adopt the technology longevity is a big thing from a performance standpoint for me i’ve been a professional golfer for nearly 18 years and having tools like Whoop to help you on that journey I think is super important we just launched Health Span with Whoop age which tells you how old you are relative to your actual chronological age it’s designed to help people both perform better and be healthier we looked at 5 years of tour data 380 professional golfers and what we saw is that the individuals who manage their recovery better and manage their sleep better perform better by up to three strokes i have to be really disciplined about everything that I do it’s great to have the whip tell you that you’re on the right track there’s no reason for people to guess about their health anymore the data is too good so we’re in a position where we’ve never had more agency over the trajectory of our health than we do today we’re excited to see people really invest in their new physiological baseline and then ultimately live a healthier life [Music] i’ve had a great decade or more on tour and all that knowledge that I’ve gathered I can put into these next 10 my body feels as good as it ever has at 30 so I’m excited for the future as Rory was turning the page in his 20s he continued to build on the foundations laid years ago in Northern Ireland maybe one of the greatest swings in the game everything perfectly sequenced up wonderful balance he’s got a swing that is his he hasn’t really tried to put his body in positions that it hasn’t been used to across his whole lifetime yes it’s matured yes it’s more polished more efficient but it’s the same framework really rory isn’t that metricbased when it comes to his golf swing but he’s incredibly metric based and data focused when it comes to his health i just wanted to know more about my body and myself and how I recover i just wanted to optimize what I do he tracks the amount of grams of protein he eats a day the amount of hours of sleep he gets he tracks all these different parameters within himself with focus on both body and mind the more complete Rory was beginning to emerge rory Mroy is a player’s champion the hardest thing for him was to separate Rory the golfer from Rory the man and it was only about 10 years into his career when he realized that who I am as a person isn’t who I am as a golfer and I think that’s been the big difference between the highs and lows of the last few years and the more consistent play he kept his most consistent season with a second FedEx Cup joining Tiger Woods as the only players to win that title multiple times it’s only appropriate that the guy with a win at the players ends it with a FedEx Cup title he was also named PGA Tour player of the year for a third time it’s been a 5year gap since I won it so to get back to this level again um you know it means I’m I’m doing the right thing i would say he was getting his game back on track and then co hit probably at the worst time and I think in retrospect Rory was flat for a good 18 months but if you’re a headliner you want the crowd the return of the fans meant a return to Rory’s winning ways 2021 was the start of five straight years where Rory won multiple times worldwide the longest streak of his career the Roars have returned in Gulf the crowds are back and I think that means Rory’s back yes just sort of stuck my head down and kept going and took advantage of the opportunity that I was given cory Mroy with his extraordinary talents wins a third FedEx Cup title i’ve been waiting a long time to win a major championship after my last one to share two FedEx Cups with Tiger Woods I thought was a really cool accomplishment but to get to three I would put that up with some of the biggest achievements I’ve had in the game this is a year to really build off of and I’m really excited about going into 23 and beyond he’ll lead Congereie with the trophy win number 23 but even while succeeding around the world he also had to overcome some of the most difficult losses of his career i think that’s the perception that it’s just a one-way path to success you shouldn’t be fearful of failure because it should make you better rory always found ways to get back into the fight andy’s resilience was on display for all to see oh wow an amazing finish for Mroy and a first victory ever in Scotland milestone win for Mroy a signature performance by Rory Mroy i feel like my entire game is a little more consistent now than it was back in 2014 it’s been so well documented that he’s gone 10 years without winning a major and majors are what Rory Mroyy’s measured by you’re only going to come back one of two ways one you’re going to be better than before or you’re going to disappear i just want to achieve a lot more i want to be competing for the biggest titles in the game what was so cool to see in his data going into the masters Rory improved his resting heart rate by six beats per minute which is clinically like very significant he improved his heart rate variability which is basically a measure of how well you can adapt to external stress by 9 milliseconds so what Rory did is essentially build in the off season this incredible physiological buffer essentially which enables him to withstand the rigors of a season i don’t see the point in putting all this time and effort into what I do and into my career and trying to master my craft if I don’t get to prove to myself that I can do it under the most intense pressure and in the biggest moments in our game to see what I’m made of a virtuoso performance by Mroy despite all Mroy had accomplished in his long career one goal still remained masters what’s your jacket size i’m either a 38 or a 40 short i like it a little more like European style so a little more fitted a little more tapered and and pinched in after a decade of heartache and close calls Rory still found ways to climb closer to the title that had eluded him i’ve loved Augusta since the first time I laid eyes on it back in ‘ 09 every time that I’ve been there and I’ve had a chance I’ve learned something different 2025 was the year that he finally put on the green jacket after nearly two decades of trying a lifetime’s worth of returns to Augusta was guaranteed it’s not every day you get to fulfill one of your lifelong goals and dreams and the big thing for me is just how the whole journey sort of resonated with people when you start coming up against a wall like I pushed through them that’s what Rory taught us for me was the ultimate resilience from any golfer I’ve ever seen the only word I can use with the scene on the 18th green at Augusta National was relief rory does Rory things and he did i see what he puts into the game and I see the time and effort he puts into the game and he deserves it more than him even after these close losses he’s pushing himself to get a little better in all these different ways people can see themselves in the struggle at times and everything that you sort of try to put into getting the best out of yourself in that journey he just manages all the different aspects of what he needs to be at the highest level from his technique to his training to his recovery he’s just kind of ticking all those boxes consistently and that good work’s accumulating you could conceivably see Rory play at the highest level for nearly another decade if he stays the course the next phase actually could be they could be like the first phase could be a lot of fun [Music] someone from a tiny little town in Northern Ireland worked really hard and followed his dreams and got the most out of what he wanted to achieve i want to continue to step outside my comfort zone challenge myself in different areas of my life that’s the goal for the rest of my life [Applause]