While Rory McIlroy is one of the big favourites whenever he tees it up on the PGA Tour, it still felt like a real statement of intent when he won at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on his first start of the year stateside.
Rory McIlroy had a point to prove in 2025. He is one of those players who is so good that he can win four times and yet still have some feeling that he had a disappointing season after failing to win a major.
Of course, it remains to be seen if he can end that wait for a fifth major this year. But he has certainly sent a message to his rivals with his performance at Pebble Beach where he won by two over Shane Lowry.
McIlroy is no stranger to winning on the PGA Tour, so some will be reserving judgement until they see how his game looks once he makes his way off the first tee at Augusta National in April.
Trevor Immelman says one part of Rory McIlroy’s game is so ‘underrated’
However, it seems that some are extremely encouraged by what they have seen from the Northern Irishman. In fact, there is a feeling that the 35-year-old is not getting the full credit he deserves.
Speaking on Fried Egg Golf, Trevor Immelman explained why he is so excited about McIlroy this year. And he claimed that some parts of his game are looking even better than many realise.
“I think he’s going to have a big ’25. That performance at Pebble Beach was spectacular, that back nine performance, the whole week, the back nine performance though, it was kind of Tiger like. When it mattered and when it was time, he just put his foot on the gas and was like, ‘alright boys, that’s enough playing around. I’ve had enough of this’, and then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. From 12 through 16, it was just, ‘okay, I’m winning this, you guys can play for second’. Super, super impressive,” he said.
“The way he’s gone about it, understood or felt that there was something lacking in his swing in ’24, hit some shots he didn’t like under pressure, locks himself in a simulator for a couple of weeks in the off-season, makes the tweaks that he wants to make in his backswing so he can get that club falling in a better slot for him, comes out and these changes are bedded in. He had a nice performance there at the end of last year in Dubai to win the Race to Dubai for the sixth time now. And that performance at Pebble was legit. And now we’re at Torrey Pines, which is just a bomb-fest.
“He’s going to be tough to beat around there. His short game seems to have improved. He is a super, super underrated chipper and bunker player. Nobody talks about how good his hands are around the greens. The guy is a great chipper and a great bunker player. And the putting, in the last couple of years, it’s not holding him back. It’s like a semi-weapon, and everything else he has is like a weapon of mass destruction.”
The big problem McIlroy despite his Pebble Beach triumph
McIlroy’s wedge game seemed to be the Achilles heel of his game for the large majority of 2024. It was the part of his game which seemed to cost him in the tournaments where he had a real chance of winning. He hit a number of strange shots along the way.
Meanwhile, two of McIlroy’s most memorable shots in 2024 came on the greens; in fact, they came in the space of three holes at Pinehurst at the US Open.
The problem with McIlroy is that winning PGA Tour events clearly does not mean a great deal by the time the majors come around. It is abundantly clear that he is good enough to probably double his major tally in the years to come.
However, McIlroy will be aware that there is no other way for those scars to heal than to get across the line in one of the sport’s four biggest events.
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