Rory McIlroy ‘feeling pretty good’ after first round in Abu Dhabi since swing change

Rory McIlroy made changes to his swing ahead of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, and they seem to have paid off through round one.

Every day for three weeks, Rory McIlroy locked himself in a simulator bay at the Bear’s Club in Florida, practicing and focusing on his swing mechanics, not his ball flight.

He has had nearly a month off, so he wanted to take advantage of this time to improve his technicalities. McIlroy said that he had not had this type of practice session for nearly 18 months, adding that hitting balls on a range instead of inside would not help his mechanics and setup.

“Not seeing the ball flight for a while, I think, has been really important to try to implement some of those little changes,” McIlroy said on Wednesday.

“It’s not necessarily that I couldn’t make the way I was swinging work. It was just that it relied a little bit more on timing and match-ups of my transition and a bunch of different technical things. I just wanted to clean it up a little bit. Clean up the motion to make it a little more efficient.”

Whatever tweak McIlroy made has paid off so far. He fired a 5-under 67 during the opening round of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, the first event of the DP World Tour playoffs.

“Overall, it felt pretty good today,” McIlroy said after the first round.

“I probably wasn’t as imaginative out there, or I was sort of hitting very straight shots, and I hit a couple where I didn’t really see the picture of what I was trying to do with the ball flight because I was thinking too much on what I was doing with the swing.”

McIlroy only moved outside to hit golf balls a week ago, proof that his first-round score was more impressive than what appears on the surface. He made six birdies and only one bogey on Thursday, as he now trails Tommy Fleetwood by five. McIlroy looks destined to remain atop the Race to Dubai standings before next week’s DP World Tour Championship, too.

But McIlroy’s 2024 season will be defined not by his wins in Dubai in January, Charlotte in May, or what will, in all likelihood, be a sixth Order of Merit title on the DP World Tour. Instead, golf fans will remember his near miss at the U.S. Open, his close call at Royal County Down, and the playoff loss to Billy Horschel at Wentworth.

That’s why he spent so much time tinkering with his mechanics in a studio. He wanted to tighten up his sight lines, which, in theory, should help his ball striking, something that let him down at Pinehurst No. 2 and other significant events this season.

“Sometimes when my swing goes off, I can hit draws and fades, but I have to aim further right and left for those draws and fades to make sure that I do it,” McIlroy added Wednesday when discussing his swing.

“Instead of being able to hit a three-yard draw, it’s more like an eight- or ten-yard draw, and I’m the same way the other way with the fade. It’s just into these extremes a little bit. If you can tighten up your start lines, your aiming points are much tighter, and your dispersion isn’t quite as wide. So, make just a little bit of a difference with my start lines. But look, it’s a work in progress.”

Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images

“For me, it’s something just to make my golf swing more efficient, and then if it is more efficient, it means it’s not going to break down as much under pressure,” McIlroy continued.

“If I look at my year, the one thing that I would criticize myself on is the fact that I’ve had these chances to win. But then when I’ve had these chances to win, okay, some may have been because of the putter but others have been because of my ball-striking letting me down as a crucial point. I think just trying to clean all that up so that whenever I do get under that pressure, you know, I can have a hundred percent trust in my swing and know what’s going to happen.”

What’s remarkable about McIlroy making these changes is that he is already one of the best players in the world. He’s the best driver of the golf ball the sport has ever seen—a four-time major champion, a Ryder Cup stalwart. But even players of his caliber have flaws, as seemingly every golfer does. So, for McIlroy to make these changes when he is not in the thick of the PGA Tour season, speaks volumes about his commitment to improving.

Yet, McIlroy, like any other player, believes he has work left to do.

“It’s probably still not quite where I want it to be compared to where it is inside,” McIlroy added Wednesday.

“But you have to find that balance between, you know, making the motion that you want, but also trying to hit the golf shot that you want as well. So that’s why these two weeks [in the DP World Tour playoffs] will be a good indication to see where I’m at.”

Well, after one round, he feels pretty good. But the true barometer will be after the final round of next week’s DP World Tour Championship. By then, he will have eight rounds under his belt, a decent sample size that will determine if these changes helped improve his game. Maybe they will. But if they haven’t, McIlroy will return to the studio to work on his mechanics, hoping his ball-striking becomes super-sharp by the time the calendar flips to 2025.

Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.