Rory McIlroy has found himself and with it the Northern Irish golfer has found his way to 20 PGA titles.
“It’s quite an achievement,” the winner of the CJ Cup Summit in Las Vegas told the Golf Channel after his milestone victory.
His 20th tour victory will also give him lifetime membership of the PGA Tour, in time.
“I still need a couple more years on Tour to get that lifetime exemption, but at least I’ve got the wins. I was asked that question at the start of the week, and it is a pretty big carrot,” he said.
“I think to get to 20 wins out here is a big achievement. I didn’t know if it was going to be this week, but I knew if I just kept my head down and kept playing well and kept doing the right things, I’d eventually get there. To get a win, it’s great, it feels really good.”
Rory McIlroy at the CJ Cup on October 17 in Las Vegas, Nevada Photo: VCG
A 20th career win is a big deal – he becomes only the 39th player in the history of the sport to reach the landmark. Considering the number of golfers at any event that it is a very small percentage and McIlroy is in even more elite company.
At 32, he is one of only seven players to have earned 20 Tour wins before the age of 33. The others – in order – are Arnold Palmer, Billy Casper, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.
It was almost 20 years ago that Mickelson was 32, and he had no majors to count alongside his 21 PGA Tour wins.
Mickelson now has 45 PGA Tour wins and has won six majors. There is no reason not to think that the future could be just as bright for McIlroy – though he has plenty of other golfers to reel in along the way to the very top.
He is 62 off the record of 82 Tour wins jointly held by Sam Snead and Tiger Woods and 53 off the great Jack Nicklaus’ total of 73.
That is for the future but more immediately he only needs one more to pull away from Greg Norman, Hale Irwin, Johhny Revolta and Doug Sanders – all of whom he has just joined on 20.
There are several more he will join if and when he wins his next – Craig Wood, Lanny Wadkins, Willie MacFarlane and Davis Love III. Gary Player and current tour rival Dustin Johnson are on 24 apiece.
That his 20th Tour win comes so quickly after the 32-year-old was at such a low ebb during Europe’s disastrous Ryder Cup makes it all the sweeter.
“It was huge,” McIlroy said of the Ryder Cup defeat to the US. “It really was. I was really disappointed with how I played. I get more emotional thinking about that than even thinking about this. There was a lot of reflection the last couple weeks.
“This is what I need to do. I need to play golf. I need to simplify it. I need to just be me. I think for the last few months I was maybe trying to be someone else to try and get better, and I sort of realized that being me is enough, and I can do things like this. I don’t need to search for anything. It’s all right here.”
The Ryder Cup was a watershed and McIlroy was performing so badly that he considered ending the season there and then.
“On the Saturday night of the Ryder Cup … I was done with golf. I didn’t want to see golf again until 2022,” he said.
“Sunday night at the Ryder Cup I thought, ‘Go to Vegas, go to CJ and try to build on this little bit of a breakthrough that I’ve had.'”
McIlroy also made his best score since 2019 with his third round of 62. He was happy with his performance over the tournament.
“I played really well this week, highlighted by the 10-under yesterday, but to follow that up with a really solid round today … I just played really solid golf, just kept giving myself birdie looks and thankfully made enough of them to get the job done.”
He got the job done and the Northern Irish golfer said he kept his focus on the milestone PGA Tour win.
“I didn’t know if it was going to be this week, but I knew if I just kept my head down and kept playing well and kept doing the right things that eventually I’d get there. To get a win, it’s great, it feels really good.”
He has redefined his achievements and any lingering doubt over how good he is.
“What I thought was an achievement at the start of my career when I turned pro was to get into the top 20 in the world,” McIlroy told the media after his win.
“So I’ve surpassed all of that. But as you go on, your goals, you have to reframe everything, and you have to keep resetting your goals.
“As I’ve went along in my career, I’ve had to do that because you just, you keep going. You can’t just stagnate and stay the same, you have to try to keep getting better and keep doing more things.
“I feel like the last couple weeks I’ve realized that just being me is good enough and maybe the last few months I was trying … not trying to be someone else, but maybe trying to add things to my game or take things away from my game.”
The former world No.1 has not won a major since 2014 and he is yet to finish better than fourth in his hunt for a green jacket at the Masters. His tournament win has seen him jump from 14th to eighth and there is no reason why McIlroy cannot rise back to his best.
