Rory McIlroy battled through a much-publicised major drought before claiming his Masters triumph last April, although a golfing legend now says it will be “tough” for McIlroy to conquer more big titles in the future.
Speaking to the Belfast TelegraphSix-time major champion Nick Faldo, who like McIlroy played for Europe’s Ryder Cup team, said it will be difficult for McIlroy to match the emotional high he achieved when he won the Masters and completed a career Grand Slam earlier this year.
“It’s like climbing Everest: you don’t turn around and say, ‘Let’s go back up next month,’” Faldo said, when asked if he expects McIlroy to win more majors. “There was so much emotion at Augusta, and you can’t reproduce the emotion of winning a major like that again, so I think it will be difficult for Rory to win another one.”
McIlroy himself explained the challenges Faldo was referring to.
“Look, you dream about the last putt going in at the Masters, but you don’t think about what comes next,” McIlroy said at the US Open in June. “I think I’ve always been a player who struggles to play after a big event, after winning any tournament. I always struggle to show up motivated the next week because you’ve just achieved something and you want to enjoy it and you want to enjoy a little bit of the fact that you’ve achieved a goal.”
After securing the green jacket, McIlroy did not win again on the PGA Tour in 2025, although he did win the Irish Open in September and was a key member of the European Ryder Cup team’s victory over Bethpage Black.
He is now 36 and has five major titles to his name, including the slam. And while it’s easy to suggest that it would be difficult for him to find that drive to win more major titles, as Faldo did, the opposite scenario could seemingly just as easily occur: McIlroy could play freely without pressure.
“He’s either going to be disappointed that he got 10 or he’s going to be ecstatic that he got five,” Faldo said.
While Faldo said in the same interview that McIlroy may be in a difficult position to win more, he was excited about the prospects of world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler.
“Scottie seems to be very clear-headed right now,” Faldo said. “He’s in that beautiful moment where he trusts his game 100 percent. It’s just like Tiger. Scottie has that nice mentality and routine of going into every tournament and thinking, ‘How do I find a way to win this?’ While other guys are just trying to get to Sunday. Some guys choke on Thursday, but Scottie is choke-free right now, which is amazing.
You can read the full Belfast Telegraph story with Faldo here.
As for McIlroy, you can see him in action this week. He is the headliner at the Australian Open.
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