Rory McIlroy said to have made a ‘mind-boggling’ decision which completely ruined his chances of winning at the Arnold Palmer Invitational

Add as preferred source on Google

Rory McIlroy has arguably shown more than enough in the opening months of the season to suggest that he will be one of the heavy favourites to win the Masters in a few weeks.

Rory McIlroy has been one of the stars of the year so far on the PGA Tour. The Northern Irishman won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am for the first time in his career, while he has finished inside the top 20 on each start.

But of course, McIlroy’s years are now largely judged by how he performs in the majors. And he will need no-one tell him to what the narrative will be ahead of the Masters, with the 35-year-old a victory at Augusta National away from completing the career grand slam.

Unfortunately, there were a couple of potentially concerning signs at the Arnold Palmer Invitational this past week, as he failed to break 70 in any of his four rounds at Bay Hill. McIlroy admitted making a mistake ahead of the event after putting a new driver and fairway woods in the bag.

Rory McIlroy questioned after the Arnold Palmer Invitational

He would switch back to his old equipment for Sunday. Nevertheless, he still fell five places over the final round to finish tied for 15th.

And speaking on the Golf Channel Podcast, Ryan Lavner admitted that he was somewhat baffled to see McIlroy switch things up at this stage of the year.

“It seems a little bit mind-boggling to do this at the start of the Florida swing, and not December, January when a lot of guys are doing club-testing, when a lot of guys are doing ball-testing. At this point in the season, you should be fine-tuning, especially when you’re Rory McIlroy,” he said.

“I guarantee you if we rewound the podcast from a month ago, you and I were effusive in our praise of what Rory had done, what he could do this year based on his strategy, his course management, his ball control, his spin control, the blast number on 14, the par five, hitting it over the tree, it was mind-blowing stuff. And then, the experiment goes wrong.

“It’s fine, I don’t think it will necessarily have any lingering affects for his Players Championship, but it certainly torpedoed his chances of winning this week at Bay Hill.”

How Rory McIlroy performed off the tee at Bay Hill

Perhaps interestingly, it was actually in the fourth round where McIlroy registered his worst strokes gained off the tee performance. The four-time major champion found himself down in 39th in that particular area on the final day.

That may be due to the fact that he had to readjust once again. But when you consider that he did have such a disappointing final round at the Genesis Invitational at Torrey Pines last month, it does appear that his game is not quite as polished as some may have hoped after Pebble Beach.

Clearly, most of the tools are there. And it potentially bodes well that McIlroy is not quite performing as well as he would like with the Masters still just under a month away.

But at some point, McIlroy will need his game to reach a level which enables him to slam his foot on the accelerator when he gets to the gates of Magnolia Lane.