PINEHURST, N.C. – Rory McIlroy tuned up for this week’s U.S. Open by spending a few hours with the most prolific major winner of them all.
Last week in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., McIlroy had a two-hour conversation with Jack Nicklaus, and they talked about business, golf, branding. Everything.
The 25-year-old was just a week removed from a head-scratching performance at the Memorial Tournament – at Jack’s event – where he opened with 63, barely made the cut and eventually finished in a tie for 15th.
McIlroy and Nicklaus had lunch at Muirfield Village, and Rory hoped that they could arrange a longer sit-down. He was originally scheduled to have dinner at Nicklaus’ house last Tuesday, but his stay at Pinehurst went a little longer than intended. He settled for a Wednesday morning meeting at his office in Palm Beach.
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“He’s been really generous with his time with me, offered any sort of advice that I wanted or needed. He’s been great,” McIlroy said Wednesday at Pinehurst. “To have that at my disposal, it has to be an advantage in some way.”
Perplexing to Nicklaus – and the rest of us – is McIlroy’s scoring trend this season. He’s first on Tour in Round 1 scoring (67.63), but 192nd – third-to-last – in second-round average (73.5). He has recorded a nine-hole score of 40 or worse in each of his past four Tour events.
During their meeting last week, Nicklaus asked McIlroy: “How the hell can you shoot 63 and then 78?” – which is what he did at the Memorial.
“He said to me that he was never afraid to change things up in the middle of a round if it wasn’t going well,” McIlroy said. “He’d make a swing change right then and there. The mental strength to be able to do that and trust what you’re doing …”
McIlroy says he has a “really good rapport” with Nicklaus, which is interesting, since the 74-year-old said last year that he rarely speaks with Tiger Woods. Nicklaus said that he had never had a conservation with Woods that lasted more than a minute or two.
“He’s got his own focus and what he does, and I respect that,” Nicklaus told the Associated Press at the time. “I respect when somebody is involved in their deal. They concentrate on what they do and not what you did. That’s OK. It’s not my position to go talk to him about it. I respect that. I wouldn’t intrude on that.”
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