Rory McIlroy FULL press conference ahead of 2025 US Open ⛳️

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Masters 2025 champion Rory McIlroy speaks ahead of the US Open and explains how he’s motivating himself ahead of the upcoming major.

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please join me in welcoming Rory Mli rory just some initial reaction to the golf course and maybe a bit about what you remember from 2016 yeah um don’t really remember much about 2016 um I think I just tried to erase it from the from the memory bank um and then yeah look it’s it’s Oakmont uh you know even though Gil has uh come in here and and and done his thing um it’s still a big brute of a golf course and um you know you’re going to have to have your wits about you this week all the way throughout the bag off the tea into the greens around the greens um so yeah look everyone knows what to expect it’s Oakmont it’s going to be a a great test we’re going to open it up to questions on the right Luke uh Rory um I know the driver plays a role but if the ball’s been getting away from you off the tea a little bit there’s presumably some kind of technical thing going on too just wondering if that if what you’ve identified in your swing and what you’re work what you’re working on about it yeah I think it’s a a little bit of both i think um especially trying to you know hitting a lot of drivers every driver is sort of its own has its own character and you’re trying to manage the misses so it’s it’s definitely a little bit of both um but yeah I feel like I’ve you know as as the last few weeks go I think I learned a lot on Thursday Friday last week and did a good bit of practice at home and and feel like I’m in a better place with everything going into this week
and what did you learn at at home
uh I learned that I wasn’t using the right driver where’s the mic yeah right here to Gabby um Rory you told us at the PGA that you’ve accomplished everything you want to accomplish in the game feels like there’s kind of phase two happening right now of Rory Mroyy’s life what is your five-year plan for this next phase of of Rory i don’t have one um I have no idea i’m sort of just taking a tournament by tournament at this point um yeah I’ve I’ve I have no idea
on the left Mark
hey Rory i know it’s probably a good problem to have you know coming off the Grand Slam but what is the difficulty of kind of resetting in these last couple of weeks and and what’s the challenge that you’ve found you know the last two tournaments at least in as you go forward
yeah um I think it’s uh yeah trying to have a little bit of amnesia and forget about what happened six weeks ago um yeah and then just trying to find the motivation to go back out there and work as hard as I’ve been working you know I I worked incredibly hard on my game from uh October last year all the way up until April this year and you know the you know it was nice to sort of see the fruits of my labor come you know come to fruition and and have everything happen um but at the same time you have to enjoy that you have to enjoy what you’ve just accomplished and um you know I I certainly you know I feel like I’m still doing that and I will continue to do that but um yeah at some point you have to realize that there’s a little a little bit more golf left to play this season um here port Rush Ryder Cup you know so those are the obviously the three big things um you know that I’m sort of looking at for the for the end you know for the for the rest of the year um and yeah it’s it but I think weeks like Quill Hollow or weeks like even last week it’s a it’s a it makes it easier to reset in some way to be like okay I sort of need to get my stuff together here and um you know and and and get back to the process and and sort of what I’d been doing for you know that seven months you know from October last year until April this year stay back left with Adam
rory have you have you settled on a driver that you want to use this week first of all what What is it
a tailor mid what model are you back to the 10
or the Come out and watch me hit balls and you’ll see
okay and uh and and going back to the PGA how big of a factor was it that you didn’t have the the gamer driver that you had used at the Masters it wasn’t a big deal for Scotty so it shouldn’t have been a big deal for me right here on front left an
Hey Rory how tough is it to regain that motivation and did you think it might be this difficult to regain motivation
um yeah I didn’t I I didn’t know i mean look you you dream about the final putt going in at the Masters but you don’t think about what comes next so um yeah I’ve always I think I’ve always been a player that struggles to play after a big event you know after I win whatever tournament I I always I always struggle to show up with motivation the next week because you’ve just accomplished something and you want to enjoy it and you want to you know sort of relish the fact that you’ve that you’ve achieved a goal um and I think chasing a certain goal for the better part of you know a decade and a half you know I think I’m allowed a little bit of time to to um you know relax a little bit but you know we’re here at Oakmont i certainly can relax this week
far right to Kira rory in the aftermath of the Masters tournament a lot more demands on your time even more so than usual what have you been doing off of the golf course to kind of get back to baseline in in the personal sense outside of golf
yeah um basically saying no to every request that comes in um trying to get home as much as possible um yeah I’m trying to just um yeah do do the things that I enjoy you know like that was one of my goals for this year was to have more fun um and that’s what I’m that’s what I’m trying to do i’m trying to have more fun i’m trying we’re trying to take more trips we’re trying to Yeah we’re Yeah just trying to do things that I enjoy and get back to you know having hobbies and you know filling my time with the things that I want to do i think that’s the that’s been a big but that’s been that hasn’t just been post Augusta i’ve been trying to do that for for a while uh I’ve started to play a lot of tennis again um like Harry and Nile play tennis pretty much every week when we’re on the road and I’ve always been like I don’t want to injure myself i don’t want to whatever but like I miss not playing and I miss so Harry and I played quite a bit of tennis last weekend um so that was that was good fun um and again just like traveling and you know seeing the world and you know you know giving Poppy that opportunity to see the world at such a young age I think is a is a wonderful opportunity for her so um yeah just that sort of stuff
front left Gary
rory when you won this in 11 golf course was soft and so there was this reputation building that soft was your friend and you mentioned 16 and that was the soft part of the resume for you with respect to this championship and then the last six years you’ve been as good as anybody and you’re also really good on firm conditions explain the evolution of you being as good as you are in this championship now and also on firm conditions is it psychological is it ego-driven is it physical what is it i think it’s probably a combination of both uh or everything i I didn’t like that reputation because I felt like I was better than that reputation so that’s ego driven in some way um but I I you know I allude to this all the time like I missed the cut at the US Open in 2016 2017 and 2018 um and you know here in 16 Aaron Hills in 17 which um you know is what it is and then 2018 at Shinnikok I felt Shinikok was a really hard one because I love that golf course and for and to perform the way I did there like it really like it hurt me so I I made a decision to be like okay I want to you know I I and then I would go back I’d play Hartford the next week and I’d feel really comfortable on a PJ tour setup and then I think it it it was that week where it clicked it’s like why am I so comfortable here in Hartford but last week I had no clue what to do so that’s when you know I made the decision at that back end of 2018 into 2019 i want to try to build my game around the toughest tests that we have in the game um and then you know as you’ve seen since 2019 you know six top 10s in a row with this tournament obviously finished second the last two years in a row um and I’ve definitely become a much more um competent US Open player and I’m way more comfortable on those firm fast setups like you saw at Pinehurst last year and um LACC the year before that so um I honestly the US Open probably went from my least favorite major to to almost my favorite because of what it asks of you um and and and I love that challenge standing on the right brenley uh this might be a little bit of a silly question but how much is a f how much more of a factor is just finding the ball in the rough this week um let alone hitting it compared to other US Opens other majors other tournaments yeah I’m I’m glad we have uh spotters up there because you know I played uh last Monday you know just in in D’s outing and um you know you hit a ball off the fairway and you were you were looking for a good couple of minutes just to just to find it so um it’s it’s very penal if you miss um sometimes it’s penal if you don’t miss um but that’s you know that’s you know the the person with the the most patience and the best attitude this week is is the one that’s going to win
front left Jeff
uh Rory besides the lost ball element what did you learn about the course on your scouting trip and what have you seen in how it’s changed in the week since that yeah there’s definitely been a little bit of rain since um since that Monday monday you know last Monday felt impossible you know I birdied the last two holes for 81 so like it was it felt pretty good didn’t feel like I played that bad um so it’s much more benign right now than it was that I mean they had the pins in dicey locations and greens were running at 15 and a half and you know it was it was it was nearly impossible but um yeah this morning it it felt you know it was a little softer um you know the pins aren’t going to be on three or 4% slopes all the time so um you know if you put it in the fairway it’s it’s certainly playable um but then you just have to think about leaving leaving your ball below the hole and you know trying to you know make as many pars as you can and you know b you know you get yourself in the way of a few birdies that’s a that’s a bonus
a few more on the left Bob
uh Rory at at the players you didn’t drive it great at least early in the week but yet you overcame it you fought your way through it and shot some good scores obviously won is it any is anything the same the similar that you’re going through now with that or or and and how do you sort of get through it when you’re having a tough day off the team yeah I mean players you know the the rough’s short they probably cap it at this like two two and a half inches and then if you go off the fairway you’re in pine straw where you have a shot if you have a gap in the trees and like it’s a little it’s definitely more of a you can play recovery golf at the players um this place won’t let you do that you know it’s you got to chop it out and then just try to you know make a par from you know with a wedge in your hand um so yeah there you know I I felt like I drove the ball okay at Augusta but again it’s a recovery golf course you’ve hit it offline you can find gaps in trees and you can do something with it you miss a fairway here you can’t really do anything with it unless you’re in the middle of a fairway bunker and um you can get something over the over the lip so um yeah much more penal if you if if you do miss it and um you know hopefully you know I I feel a little better with with the driver um over the weekend at home and and even you know today playing a practice round so you know hopefully I can hit a few more fairways than I have been hitting and um give myself some opportunities
far right oh sorry far right sam
Roy you mentioned just having to chop out every time you miss a fairway are there ever calculations where you would might decide to go for it and what would go into that thinking if a ball’s in the rough
yeah just the lie just what you know whatever whatever club you think you can get on it um if there’s a bunker to cover if there’s you know it’s
Yeah
yeah i mean and the good thing about this course is most of most of the greens have um you know runups onto them it’s not as if they’re forced carried on forced carries onto greens um so it gives you if you have a half decent lie in the rough it gives you a chance to at least run the ball up to the front of the green if you’ve got a decent lie um but decent lies in the rough are few and far between so that’s why you just have to you know you don’t want to ride your luck on this golf course
last two on the left Dave and Michael
yeah Rory just a question about length versus strength is uh is strength maybe more important at this golf course than most US Opens and is it maybe more important than length this week yeah I look like look you hit the ball in the rough and you’re not going to have any control of your ball going into the green especially these greens that are pitched away from you and it’s just you know you you have to be able to spin the ball going into these greens if you wanted to finish anywhere close to where you know the where you wanted to um saying that the last two champions here did lead lead the field in driving distance you know I I watched quite a lot of 2016 over the weekend and just tried to get a feel for you know how the leaders played this golf course and you know what they did that I certainly didn’t do over the first two days um but yeah I mean you’ve got you know DJ was obviously won and Cabrera in ’07 um but you had a mix of players that were up there you know you had Jim Furick you know finished second in 16 um so I think I you know there’s different styles of games that can win here but I certainly think that you know distance is never a disadvantage um and especially on this golf course but you know I you want to combine distance with with accuracy this week that’s the that’s the recipe michael
thank you julia uh going back your whole professional career and even your amateur career you’ve always been very skillful and comfortable talking about yourself and talking about this game not everybody is and I’m wondering where that comes from um it’s probably because I love myself and I love golf are pretty comfortable talking about both of those things
did Did you have a kind of mentor for that sort of thing chubby or anybody else give you advice early on how to do it
no not really um I think you’re always going to be comfortable talking about subjects that you feel like you know a lot about um and I think I know a lot about golf uh and especially my golf i don’t you know there’s no one there’s no one better to tell you about my game and what I’m thinking and how I’m feeling than me so um and I’ve always I’ve always I’ve always enjoyed that i’ve always enjoyed talking about the game i’ve always enjoyed um the challenge that it presents physically and mentally and and trying to figure out a way to to overcome those challenges
and your dad’s a good tucker uh my dad can talk with the best of them yes
well Rory thanks for the time good luck this week thank you