Rory McIlroy and former manager Andrew “Chubby” Chandler after McIlroy’s win at the 2011 U.S. Open.
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Rory McIlroy will never win the Masters and the ensuing career grand slam, his former manager says.
Andrew “Chubby” Chandler also had several thoughts as to why, chief among them being that winning the slam — victories at all four majors — is a “massive mental block.” McIlroy has won two PGA Championships, a U.S. Open and an Open Championship, but never the Masters, and he’s without a major victory since 2014.
“If you were a betting man, you would probably bet against him winning,” Chandler told British newspaper iNews. “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.”
Chandler’s comments come after McIlroy shot rounds of 72 and 77 and missed the cut at last week’s Masters. During the second round, McIlroy wore a mic during the ESPN telecast — the “walk and talk” has been a new element to TV coverage this year — and Chandler also questioned that, along with McIlroy’s recent work in the PGA Tour’s fight against LIV Golf.
All of it is a distraction, he told iNews.
“To me, he has got carried away as a mouthpiece of the PGA Tour,” said Chandler, who split with McIlroy in 2011. “He is doing things he shouldn’t be doing and opening his mouth too often. The interview on the fairway, absolutely brilliant TV, but not good for Rory McIlroy. You can’t be having a chat with a guy in the commentary box about the day and the way he is playing, or whatever, then get over a wedge and give it 100 percent. You would never have got [Jack] Nicklaus doing it. You would never have got Tiger [Woods] doing it.
“If you could see into his head back in the days when he was flying around Augusta, there was nothing in there other than hitting a golf ball. Now he has commitments with PGA Tour, where he has been groomed as a political figurehead, with TV, with half a dozen really big sponsors. And they take up time. He now has Workday. Workday put an ad on TV; that will take a day of his time. That clutter manifests itself on the course. He needs to get away from a lot of that, and just trust his talent.”
Ahead of the Masters, McIlroy himself admitted that the challenge in winning at Augusta National was more mental to him. He said he had all the physical skills.
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“But it’s being in the right headspace to let those physical abilities shine through,” McIlroy said. “… It’s been tentative starts, not putting my foot on the gas early enough. It’s been — I’ve had a couple of bad nine holes that have sort of thrown me out of the tournament at times.
“So 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.”
In the interview with iNews, Chandler also complimented McIlroy’s accomplishments — “you can’t dismiss what he has done” — though he also questioned his inner circle.
“He employs everybody around him,” Chandler said. “He has not got anyone to say that’s not right, why are you saying that, why are you doing this? None of that. Fair play, he is his own man, he makes his own mistakes and apologizes for them. But some of the stuff he is doing is not helping him and it comes at a cost, and that is probably another 10 tournament wins.”
Editor’s note: To read the complete iNews story, please click here.
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