World number five Rory McIlroy ended his 16-month long title drought by notching up a two-stroke victory over England’s Paul Casey in the Deutsche Bank Championship in Norton, Massachusetts.
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The four-time major victor will rise 34 places in the FedEx Cup standings after this latest victory and will join the leading 70 players in the race at the BMW Championship next week.
McIlroy has been criticised for his putting performances in recent months – most notably at the US PGA Championship – but, speaking after his win, said it was criticism of his gym work more than aspects of his golf game that annoys him the most. I’m just really proud of myself, how I hung in there on the first day and then got some momentum on Saturday. “So 69 holes later – I played some great golf and holed some great putts”. I found something. I still need to keep going with it.
Back in February, Chamblee said McIlroy’s ‘extensive weightlifting” was a “concern” for him – to which the 27-year-old responded on Twitter with a video of him lifting – while at The Open, Miller said he got “carried away with wearing tight shirts and showing off his muscles’.
“It’s just incredible, this game, how quickly things can change and how quickly things can turn around”. The now two-time Deutsche Bank Championship victor put Friday’s first-round triple bogey and even-par 71 in the rear view with three subsequent rounds in the 60s (67-66-65) and a two-shot, come-from-behind victory over Paul Casey at TPC Boston. PGA champion Jimmy Walker closed with a 70 to finish third. “I wasn’t getting impatient, I wasn’t searching for things”.
Having begun the tournament in disastrous fashion to leave himself four-over through three holes, McIlroy said: “Those last 15 holes on Friday were definitely a turning point, not just in this tournament, but maybe in my season, to play the last 15 holes in four-under”.
The Northern Irishman has since spent time working with new putting coach Phil Kenyon, who also assists Henrik Stenson and Louis Oosthuizen, in a bid to find form and return to winning ways. That would be a tidy sum to have in his back pocket before the start of the Ryder Cup the following week.
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“It is incredible to think how I started this tournament, and then all of a sudden I’m standing here with a trophy”.
