Rory McIlroy might have narrowly missed out on Major success this year but another honour that eludes the World Number One is that exclusive golden Rolex caddy bib.
He’s won the DP World Tour Championship, Dubai Desert Classic and the BMW PGA Championship but all before the Rolex Series commenced, meaning poor Harry Diamond paces the fairways without the gold bib that is awarded to champions on the prestigious series of events.
You’d be a brave person to bet against Rory at this week’s DP World Tour Championship as statically his game has never been better, and he proved that this morning with a win in the Pro-Am alongside his DP World team.
“A golf course like this really plays into my strengths,” said the Northern Irishman. “Golf courses with a par 72 I normally excel on and I can make the most of the par fives with my length. The other holes you can be quite conservative off the tee, as its very hard to separate yourself from the field on these holes. It’s the par fives where you can score. This is part of the reason I have done well here on the Earth course.”
With LIV Golf being this year’s main focus on and off the course, McIlroy was keen to fix that and revealed which figure needed to make an ‘exit stage left’ to get the DP World Tour, PGA Tour and LIV Golf on the same page.
“I think Greg needs to go,” he said. “I think he just needs to exit stage left. He’s made his mark but I think now is the right time to sort of say, look, you’ve got this thing off the ground but no one is going to talk unless there’s an adult in the room that can actually try to mend fences.
“And if those two things happen, then things can happen. But right now, it’s a stale mate because there can’t be any other way. Hopefully something can happen, who knows.”
McIlroy gets his tournament underway at 12.45pm alongside Ryan Fox on Thursday.
