Rory McIlroy has got 2024 off to an excellent start with a T2 at the Dubai Invitational coming the week before he successfully defended his Dubai Desert Classic title.
While it’s shaping up to be yet another hugely successful year for the Ulsterman, though, perhaps his biggest target will be claiming his maiden Green Jacket at The Masters in April to complete a career Grand Slam.
Earlier in the month, McIlroy revealed he planned a busier schedule than usual in the build-up to the Major, telling John Huggan at Golf Digest: “My big thing about Augusta is just to go in there playing well.
“The weeks before are important just to get me feeling like I’m in good form. This year, in fact, I’m going to play more before the Masters. It will be my ninth or 10th event of the year. Previously, it’s been my sixth or seventh. I’ll hopefully be a bit sharper and know exactly where my game really is.”
That change of approach is likely a reaction to his performance at the 2023 Masters, when he suffered a rare failure by missing the cut, and he has now committed to an appearance at the PGA event that falls the week before the tournament, the Valero Texas Open.
McIlroy made a similar move two years ago, when he played the event for the first time since 2013. Back then, he explained he was doing it to “play my way into the Masters.”
It didn’t quite work out for him at the tournament, as he failed to make the weekend, although he went on to produce one of his most encouraging Masters performances to date, when a barnstorming final round saw him finish runner-up to Scottie Scheffler.
McIlroy will hope his decision to compete at the TPC San Antonio event will lead to an even better Masters result this year, and the tournaments that come before it should help, too.
The 34-year-old will make a rare appearance at the PGA Tour’s second signature event of the year, February’s Pebble Beach Pro-Am, with his only previous start there coming in 2018, while he has also committed to the Genesis Invitational two weeks after.
Another event McIlroy regularly plays is the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and it’s almost certain he’ll be at Bay Hill in March again, particularly as it’s a signature event, and the fact he finished T2 there in 2023. The week after that, it’s one of the biggest tournaments in the calendar, The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass, which is another certainty for McIlroy.
McIlroy also traditionally played the WGC-Match Play, but that’s not in this year’s schedule. However, there are still several PGA Tour events he can pick in the weeks leading up to The Masters, including the Cognizant Classic (formerly the Honda Classic), which he won in 2012, and the Valspar Championship, which he last played six years ago.
Whichever tournaments McIlroy chooses to fill his schedule between now and The Masters, his commitment to the Valero Texas Open is a clear indication that, where it comes to ambitions for the rest of the year, his maiden Augusta National win could well be at the top of the list.
