Ex-Manager of Rory McIlroy: Don’t Expect Him to Complete Career Grand Slam

We don’t have to tell you that golf can be a frustrating game.

Rory McIlroy is living it now.

After going on a year-long rampage on the course that included top 10s in all the majors, a FedEx Cup title, and the season-long DP World Tour Championship, McIlroy hasn’t seen his 2023 go as well.

He does have a win in a big DPWT event in Dubai and was runner-up at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, but the Northern Irishman missed the cut at The Players Championship and then failed to reach the weekend at Augusta too, one year after finishing in the runner-up spot.

Much of the attention was on McIlroy for this year’s Masters because he’s needed a win at Augusta for nearly 10 years now to complete the career Grand Slam. But after fizzling out, he also skipped last weekend’s RBC Heritage to get right—a move that cost him $3 million.

In an interview with iNews out of the UK, McIlroy’s manager from 2007-11, Chubby Chandler, said he would be surprised if McIlroy ever won a green jacket.

Chandler said:

“If you were a betting man you would probably bet against him winning [the career Grand Slam]. He has made winning the Grand Slam a bigger thing in his head than it actually is. He is not really driven by number of wins or number of majors per se, but he seems to be driven by wanting to win the Grand Slam. It’s a massive mental block and it’s getting harder and harder. Every time he gets there, he has the pressure from everyone else, but also from himself.”

While McIlroy would never concede that he will never complete the career slam, the way he spoke about his approach prior to this year’s Masters would say that he is thinking along the same lines that his issues there are between the ears.

McIlroy said:

“I would say the majority are mental or emotional struggles rather than physical. I’ve always felt like I have the physical ability to win this tournament. But it’s being in the right head space to let those physical abilities shine through. … It’s sort of just like I’ve got all the ingredients to make the pie. It’s just putting all those ingredients in and setting the oven to the right temperature and letting it all sort of come to fruition. But I know that I’ve got everything there. It’s just a matter of putting it all together.”

While McIlroy didn’t get the job done at the Masters, he has three more tries this year to snap his near-10-year major drought, starting with the PGA Championship next month.