Rory McIlroy had a disappointing week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship to begin the postseason, but it’s been much better at the 2024 BMW Championship through 36 holes.
The Northern Irishman opened with a 2-under 70 on Thursday and followed it up with a 1-under 71 on Day 2 to sit at 3 under going into the weekend.
On the par-5 527-yard 17th at Castle Pines Golf Club, McIlroy pulled 3-wood off the tee and flared it into the right rough.
Unhappy with a bad tee shot on a scoreable hole, McIlroy gave his 3-wood a little toss on the tee box and it ended up going into the pond in front of the teeing area.
Crews began construction on March 18 and now are working toward full “dry-in.”
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Florida — The indoor golf arena rising on the Palm Beach State College campus in Palm Beach Gardens now resembles a nearly enclosed building.
Five months before teams of players from around the world begin to compete in TGL team play there, crews have completed work on the towering SoFI Center’s roof and sides.
Next, they will work on the steel framing for its “surrounding concourse,” a part of the building that juts out in the front. This will be the arena’s entrance area with space for concessions, according to a spokesperson for TGL presented by SoFi.
TGL is the interactive golf league that’s led by PGA Tour players Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who both have homes in the region. The first match is scheduled to be broadcast on ESPN on Jan. 7, 2025, during prime time.
Crews began construction on March 18 and now are working toward full “dry-in” — when the building’s shell is complete and protected from wind and rain — in early September.
After that, interior and tech teams will install some of the SoFi Center’s technology, including rigging the arena for lighting, cameras and audio, installing motorization tech under the putting green and putting in screen framing and LED boards.
A 46-foot-by-64-foot Jumbotron-type screen will also be installed in time for a full rehearsal in mid-fall.
These same tech elements were originally installed in an inflatable dome, the first iteration of the arena, according to the spokesperson. Those plans were scrapped when blustery weather and a power outage left the dome in tatters.
Maya Washburn covers northern Palm Beach County for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida-Network. Reach her atmwashburn@pbpost.com. Support local journalism:Subscribe today.
McIlroy said he has “three (events) on the PGA Tour to turn an OK season into a very good one.”
Rory McIlroy hopes to use the next three weeks to “change the narrative” of his season as he bids to win the FedEx Cup title for a record-extending fourth time.
McIlroy has won twice worldwide this season but is all too aware of letting other chances slip through his fingers, most painfully in the US Open at Pinehurst and the Olympic Games in Paris.
As a result, the 35-year-old heads into the first playoff event – the FedEx St Jude Championship at TPC Southwind – almost 3,500 points behind Scottie Scheffler, the world number one having won six times on the PGA Tour before securing Olympic gold at Le Golf National.
“I certainly don’t want to sit up here and belittle my achievements at all this year and what I’ve done, but at the same time I expect a certain standard from myself,” McIlroy said.
“I’ve won a couple of times. I’ve had an opportunity to win a few more times than that and haven’t been able to get over the line. So I would have liked to have added a couple more to that win column.
“But as I said, there’s still three tournaments left in this PGA Tour season. I think I’ve actually got eight or nine tournaments left this year, but three on the PGA Tour to turn an OK season into a very good one.
“I think when the bulk of the season has come and gone and you’ve got this opportunity of three weeks to really, I guess, flip the script a little bit or change the narrative and what that season means, I think that’s a motivating factor and part of the reason that I’ve probably played well in the playoffs for the last three years.”
Ireland’s Rory McIlroy competes in round 1 of the men’s golf individual stroke play of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at Le Golf National in Guyancourt, south-west of Paris on August 1, 2024. (Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP)
Asked if he needed to do anything different to get rid of the “nearly man” tag he gave himself after the Olympics, McIlroy added: “I just have to finish off tournaments better.
“There’s been glimpses where I have done it, like Quail Hollow (at the Wells Fargo Championship), for example. But obviously the US Open, Olympics.
“I feel like this year and maybe the last couple years I’ve just found a way to hit the wrong shot at the wrong time. That might go into preparation and trying to practice a little more under pressure at home.
“You go through these things in golf and you go through these little challenges and you just have to try to figure out a way to get through it and my challenge right now is that.
“It’s really good but not quite good enough to take home the silverware. It’s just something I’m having to work through.”
Scheffler has topped the FedEx Cup standings heading into the season-ending Tour Championship in each of the last two years but has relinquished the two-stroke lead that gives him on both occasions.
McIlroy overturned a six-shot deficit in the final round at East Lake in 2022, while Viktor Hovland wiped out Scheffler’s advantage by the end of the first round 12 months ago.
“I don’t really think about an exclamation point (on the season) or anything like that, but I definitely want to win the FedEx Cup,” Scheffler said.
“It’s quoted as the season-long race but at the end of the day it really all comes down to East Lake. I didn’t have my best stuff at East Lake the last couple of years.
“I’m kind of excited that they changed the course a little bit. It may give me some new vibes around there.”
In Paris, there will be no talk of prize money or FedEx Cup points or any other commoditized metric.
To whatever extent the Olympics ever truly embodied noble values like sporting excellence and international unity, it has long since been overtaken by more obvious priorities among its constituent parties — commercialism, geopolitics and cheating, to single out just a few. Thus, for cynical sports fans, targets don’t come any softer than IOC luminaries in Lausanne.
Golf fans too have reason for ambivalence. In most sports, an Olympic gold medal is the pinnacle of achievement. In golf — being included for a third consecutive Olympiad — gold represents the sport’s fifth biggest prize, at best, and perhaps only the seventh. Most male competitors place greater value on major championships, and even the Players. Plenty would prefer a FedEx Cup, the game’s most lucrative title. That prioritization won’t change while fields are comprised of professionals rather than amateurs.
Eight years on from Rio, Olympic medals remain an ill-defined currency for golfers. Xander Schauffele is justifiably proud of his Tokyo gold, but it was cited as his peak accomplishment only because he didn’t own the pair of majors he collected this summer. Yet much has changed since the XXXII Games in Japan, and perhaps fans will now better appreciate the rarest thing in our sport: a title that isn’t defined by its monetary value.
Some of the most enthralling action in Paris has featured athletes well-compensated in their sports but for whom a podium finish has genuine meaning. Witness the last stand of Andy Murray and the potential farewell of Rafael Nadal. Presumably, a few golfers are competing grudgingly, not particularly animated by an unpaid week of work during an already long season, but wary of being perceived as disloyal to their flags. Most are embracing the moment though.
“It makes you feel like you’re part of something bigger than just golf,” said Ludvig Aberg. Nicolai Højgaard confessed to goosebumps from wearing national colors and imagining a medal. Even Rory McIlroy, once a doubter, has become a believer. In 2021, he lost a seven-man playoff for the bronze medal and remarked afterward that he’d never tried so hard to finish third. One man even tried to litigate his place at Le Golf National. Joost Luiten qualified but the Dutch Olympic committee decided not to send him (the same body didn’t prevent a convicted child rapist from competing under its flag). Luiten won his case but his spot had already been given away so he was placed on the alternate list. He didn’t start the men’s event on Thursday.
Anyone who watched Shane Lowry’s glee as Ireland’s flag-bearer understood what the Olympics means to him. After the opening ceremony, he flew to Dublin to attend the All-Ireland Gaelic football final. Lowry is a devoted fan of the sport, and his father was part of the national title-winning team in 1982. This year’s final pitted counties Galway and Armagh, the latter from whence I sprang. Friends and family crossed oceans to attend. I didn’t watch, but driving around the county in recent days one can’t avoid the undiluted passion. Bunting was draped on most buildings. Flags fluttered from most moving cars. Sheep were dyed. As feverish fandom goes, it rivals South American soccer.
Gaelic footballers have one thing in common with Olympians: neither are paid. Many athletes in Paris earn the other 40-odd weeks of the year, but not Irish footballers. Guys become national heroes on the weekend and return to work Monday as teachers and electricians. Their rewards — pride in community, love for the sport, being stood a drink in every pub in the county for eternity — must seem awfully quaint to anyone familiar with the prevailing sentiments in men’s professional golf, where so many conversations are focused on compensation and entitlement.
In one respect — the 72-hole stroke play format — Olympic golf is too similar to the norm. In another, it’s a welcome respite. In Paris, there will be no talk of prize money or FedEx Cup points or any other commoditized metric that can make golf feel less like a passion and more like a product. So many of the things that turn off fans are missing, though Greg Norman is wandering the boulevards taking selfies and blathering about LIV because … well, Greg Norman. (If only the IOC had the humor to award him an honorary silver medal).
Perhaps an Olympic gold won’t ever be the equal of a major championship for most competitors, but the presence of golf in the Games is only a positive. In many nations, a sport having Olympic status impacts government development funding. So if folks want to talk about growing the game — and mean it as more than a convenient platitude — this is a decent place to try, even if the significance won’t be measurable for years. That’s a reality elite female golfers grasped long before their male counterparts. These two weeks in Paris are about what the world’s best golfers can contribute, not about what they will receive.
Every golfer has different ways of preparing for the Olympics.
Every golfer has different ways of preparing for the Olympics.
Ben An went home to Florida while Tom Kim stayed in London. Scottie Scheffler vacationed a bit in France and has been enjoying the Olympic experience and Paris with his family.
For Rory McIlroy, his prep involves the home of golf.
McIlroy was one of the favorites two weeks ago at Royal Troon before missing the cut, and video surfaced Monday of him playing the Old Course at St. Andrews only 72 hours before he’s set to tee it up for Ireland in the Olympic games at Le Golf National in Paris.
Rory McIlroy is preparing for @OlympicGolf in Paris with a round on The Old Course at St Andrews this afternoon.
The men’s golf competition is set to begin Thursday at the site of the 2018 Ryder Cup. McIlroy went 2-3-0 in Paris that year with the Europeans coming out on top.
It’s nothing new for McIlroy to show up to events only a couple of days before they begin. It’s something he has done numerous times this year, including major championship weeks.
He even had some fun with some inebriated fans near the clubhouse.
The league’s first match is just around the corner, set to begin Jan. 7, 2025.
In August of 2022, a new vision for golf was born.
Backed by TMRW Sports, golf legends Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy headed the creation of Tomorrow’s Golf League, an interactive league that fuses the traditional sport and advanced technology in an indoor arena.
The Palm Beach Gardens-based league was originally set to launch in January of this year but was pushed back due to arena damages caused by a windstorm and power outage back in November.
Now, the league’s first match is just around the corner, set to begin Jan. 7, 2025. Follow along Woods and McIlroy’s journey to tee time.
New Tiger Woods golf arena at PBSC campus in Palm Beach Gardens could be metal
Will Tiger Woods’ new tech golf league get a metal arena on Palm Beach State College land in Palm Beach Gardens?
The PBSC Board of Trustees is scheduled to meet soon to discuss further a proposal to rebuild the indoor golf arena on the school’s campus off PGA Boulevard with prefabricated metal instead of an air-inflated dome.
The Palm Beach State College Board of Trustees will allow TMRW Sports to construct a permanent arena for an interactive golf league led by stars such as Tiger Woods and Rory McElroy on their Palm Beach Gardens campus — just as long as the company pays it hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
TGL, as the league is known, was supposed to start play this year in an inflatable dome on a 3-acre site along PGA Boulevard. In November, when work on the dome was nearly done, fierce winds and rain ripped apart the dome, forcing TMRW Sports to change plans.
TGL, the interactive golf league headed by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, has announced the first three dates for its inaugural 2025 season after receiving approval from Palm Beach State College last Friday to construct a permanent arena.
The league, backed by TMRW Sports, will play its first three matches the first three Tuesdays in January, debuting Jan. 7. The prime-time matches will be televised by ESPN. The remainder of the schedule was not revealed.
Exclusive: Tiger Woods talks TGL with USA Today Network: ‘I couldn’t be more excited for January’
Tiger Woods hits his tee shot on the 12th hole during the first round of the Open Championship golf tournament at Royal Troon. Mandatory Credit: Jack Gruber-USA TODAY Sports
TGL, the Palm Beach Gardens-based interactive golf league, is “full steam ahead” according to one of its co-founders, Hall of Famer Tiger Woods.
Woods, the Jupiter Island resident, answered questions via e-mail exclusively for The Palm Beach Post (part of the USA Today Network) about his team, Jupiter Links GC, and the league that has overcome the setback of the roof on its original building collapsing in November due to a power outage and wind storm. The incident forced the start date to be pushed back one year.
Tiger Woods’ TGL team includes top 10 player in the world, rising PGA Tour star
Max Homa called it “a dream” to play in Tiger Woods’ group the first two days of the Masters. When asked following Friday’s competition what he will remember from his round, he said just “a lot of Tiger stuff.”
Now, Homa will build on those memories going forward.
Max Homa’s take on why he believes he’s on Tiger Woods’ TGL team will surprise you\
US golfer Max Homa waits on the 12th green on the opening day of the 152nd British Open Golf Championship at Royal Troon on the southwest coast of Scotland on July 18, 2024. (Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN / AFP)
Max Homa gave a quick lesson Tuesday when it comes to TGL, the interactive golf league headed by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.
And he kept coming back to one word: fun.
“It should be fun,” he said. “I think you’re going to have to see it to fully get it for everybody like it’s a lot bigger than playing simulator golf.”
Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy-led TGL rosters for all six teams in interactive golf league
TGL, the interactive golf league headed by Woods and Rory McIlroy, is preparing for its inaugural season, which starts Jan. 7. The league will be played in Palm Beach Gardens at a venue to be built on the campus of Palm Beach State College.
Here are the rosters. Boston and San Francisco each will add a fourth player. Although San Francisco’s team officially has not been revealed, its roster will include those remaining players who joined TGL.
Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy golf league fills out final roster spot with another top 15 golfer
Hideki Matsuyama of Japan looks across the 16th hole during day two of the Genesis Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club on July 12, 2024 in North Berwick, Scotland. (Photo by Luke Walker/Getty Images)
With less than seven months before TGL launches in Palm Beach Gardens, the interactive golf league headed by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy has filled its final roster spot.
Japanese legend Hideki Matsuyama was announced as the fourth member of Boston Common Golf, joining Jupiter’s McIlroy, Keegan Bradley and Adam Scott. Matsuyama, ranked No. 12 in the world, replaces Tyrrell Hatton, who vacated his spot on the team after joining LIV Golf.
How Palm Beach Gardens is growing: Tiger Woods’ golf arena towers over PBSC campus
Crews build the SoFi Center for the TGL indoor golf league that was founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy on Palm Beach State College land on July 10, 2024, in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
The indoor golf arena rising on the Palm Beach State College campus in Palm Beach Gardens now towers over nearby homes, neighborhood buildings, passing delivery trucks and neighboring trees at around 75 feet tall.
Crews have finished building the SoFi Center’s foundations. And the steel and walls and roof panels are on site. Roof work began this month, and crews are working six days a week for 10 hours per day, said a spokesperson for TGL, the interactive golf league that will call the center home. That league is being led by golf legends Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who both have homes in the region.
“He asked me how it felt on the putting green, then I asked him how it felt to have a hundred of them.”
TROON, Scotland – Tiger Woods may not be lighting up the leaderboards these days but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten what it takes to be a great champion.
Woods, 48, is turning into a regular Arnold Palmer these days. Remember how Palmer used to famously send letters to the winners of all the major professional golf tournaments? It was a wonderful gesture and something that players saved and cherish.
Well, Tiger isn’t exactly penning love letters to his fellow pros but in his dotage he’s turned over a new leaf and started to become the elder statesman whose words of congratulations – or in the case of Rory McIlroy words of encouragement – mean the world to players.
Earlier this week, Tiger acknowledged that he waited a week for things to die down after the U.S. Open to text McIlroy and essentially tell him to keep his head up and better days are ahead after his heartbreaking defeat (more on Tiger’s text and McIlroy’s phone number change here).
It also became public that Tiger congratulated Bryson DeChambeau on winning the U.S. Open in June. DeChambeau had previously told Golfweek that Tiger had gone radio silent since he departed for LIV Golf, but he made an exception to tell DeChambeau job well done at Pinehurst.
“It is the first communication, but I’ll say he’s competitor and I have a lot of respect for him,” said DeChambeau, who used to play practice rounds with Tiger and whose game he often praised before he chose to join LIV. “I’m sure that winning two U.S. Opens definitely helped, I guess, for him coming up and saying congrats. I don’t know what his position is, but it was very thoughtful, and I was appreciative of it.”
And DeChambeau wasn’t the only recent major winner to receive warm words from Tiger for his major accomplishment. Tiger was paired with Xander Schauffele, winner of the PGA Championship in May, and approached him on the putting green before their opening round on Thursday.
“He said congrats to me,” Schauffele said. “He asked me how it felt on the putting green, then I asked him how it felt to have a hundred of them. We had a nice chuckle before the round. It puts it into perspective when you look at someone that’s done what he’s done, only having one.”
Much like Palmer before him, Tiger’s simple gesture seems to have gone a long way with his fellow competitors.
There isn’t a sport that can humble the best players quite like golf can. And for Rory McIlroy, the golf gods just haven’t been on his side lately.
McIlroy took some time away from golf after his brutal collapse at the U.S. Open, returning refreshed last week for a fourth-place finish at the Genesis Scottish Open. But The Open Championship at Royal Troon is a different animal. The course — combined with unfavorable elements — can wreak havoc on even the best golfers.
It got so bad for McIlroy on Thursday that he essentially played himself out of contention in the opening round. McIlroy shot an abysmal 77, putting him at seven-over par and tied for 133rd. No moment summed up his day quite like the bunker shot on the eighth hole, known as “The Postage Stamp.”
Royal Troon is claiming victims at The Open Championship.
Awesome example of what happens in these bunkers. You can make an easy bogey, but if you want a par you often need to take a big risk.
McIlroy played his shot out of the bunker only to watch the ball reach the edge of the green and roll right back where it came from … in the bunker. A true boomerang shot at the worst time.
McIlroy settled for a double bogey on the hole, and it honestly could have gone worse. Still, there won’t be any bounce-back performance in a major for Rory. U.S. Open champ Bryson DeChambeau also had a rough go on Thursday, finishing at five-over par. So, at least there’s that for Rory.
TROON, Scotland — After dueling for the U.S. Open title last month in the North Carolina Sandhills, Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy dueled for the most disappointing start at the 152nd British Open on Thursday.
DeChambeau shot 42 on the front nine at Royal Troon and posted 5-over 76 while McIlroy was even worse, slicing his tee shot on the train tracks at No. 11 and shooting 7-over 78.
“It was a weird day,” DeChambeau said.
“It was definitely tricky,” said McIlroy of the test that was Troon, the seaside links along the west coast of Ayrshire.
Despite a light rain for much of the day, the course played firm with just enough wind to wreak havoc.
“It was brutal out there,” defending champion Brian Harman said.
McIlroy, the world No. 2, said, “if anything, it was more like the conditions got the better of me, those cross-winds.”
Oh, those fickle winds. McIlroy dropped a shot at the first but got it back with his lone birdie of the day at No. 3 after wedging to inside 4 feet. It all started to go wrong at No. 8, the Postage Stamp par 3, where his tee shot found the right bunker and he needed two tries to extricate himself. Double bogey.
“I missed the green and left it in the bunker and made a 5. Then once we turned on that back nine, it was left-to-right winds. I was sort of struggling to hole the ball in that wind a little bit, and that got me.”
So did his tee shot at No. 11, which sailed right and out of bounds and resulted in another double bogey. McIlroy, who has been stuck on four major titles for nearly a decade, didn’t respond well to conditions that perplexed the field of 157.
“You play your practice rounds, and you try to come up with a strategy that you think is going to get you around the golf course. Then when the wind is like that, you know, other options present themselves, and you start to second guess yourself a little bit,” McIlroy said. “The conditions were tough on that back nine, and I just didn’t do a good enough job.”
Neither did DeChambeau, though his travails were largely on the front nine.
Bryson DeChambeau hits out of the rough on the 15th hole during the first round of the 2024 British Open at Royal Troon. (Jack Gruber-USA TODAY Sports)
He made bogeys at three of the first four holes, missing par putts of inside 5 feet at the first and just over 3 feet at the fourth. Then he made a double bogey at the sixth, spraying his tee shot right into thick rough and tried to hack a 7-iron out of trouble.
“I didn’t get it high enough,” he said. “I thinned it a little bit and caught the stuff and came out dead, and then I tried to open face a 5-wood and squirted off the left side of my face and just shot left. I’m just glad nobody got hurt. Luckily I found it.”
But it was the wind that proved to be a riddle that DeChambeau failed to solve.
“It was in and off the right and I was trying to draw the ball and the ball was knuckling a little bit,” he said. “It was a really difficult challenge, and I should have just cut the ball.”
DeChambeau finished T-6 at the Masters, second at the PGA Championship and then won the U.S. Open for the second time. But the Open Championship has typically given him fits: a T-8 in 2022 is his only finish better than T-33 in six previous starts, and the change in wind direction created a variable he said he felt unprepared for.
“It’s a completely different test. I didn’t get any practice in it, and I didn’t really play much in the rain,” he explained, calling the conditions “something I’m not familiar with.”
He added: “I never grew up playing it, and not to say that that’s the reason… I can do it when it’s warm and not windy.”
After playing his first eight holes in 6 over, DeChambeau righted the ship. He did have one highlight to remember, holing a 55-foot eagle putt at 16.
However, the driver was as erratic as it was in the final round of the U.S. Open when he managed to find just five fairways but kept drawing good lies amid the Pinehurst wiregrass and scrub brush. His luck ran out as the Scottish fescue proved more penal. DeChambeau blamed his Krank driver, which he said was designed for around 190 ball speed, for not being built for cooler conditions when the golf ball doesn’t compress as much.
“It’s probably something along those lines,” he said.
Both DeChambeau and McIlroy have dug big holes and will have their work cut out just to make the cut.
“He absolutely gutted,” Golf Channel’s Paul McGinley said of McIlroy. “His race is probably run now at this stage. As they say, you can’t win the Open or a major on the first day, but you can certainly lose it and he may well have lost it there today.”
DeChambeau, for one, wasn’t ready to throw in the towel.
“They don’t see how hard Harry works and how good he is for Rory.”
After Rory McIlroy’s stunning defeat at the U.S. Open last month, several media members and hundreds of fans criticized Harry Diamond, McIlroy’s caddie, for a lack of communication down the stretch.
For example, Smylie Kaufman had this to say during an appearance on Golf’s Subpar Podcast: “I felt like (caddie) Harry Diamond really should have stepped in on the 15th hole. He did not have the right club in his hands. And I felt like Rory could have taken control of the championship on 15 if he just hits it in the middle of the green. And he hit a good shot. But it just was the wrong club.”
McIlroy came to his looper’s defense before last week’s Genesis Scottish Open, where he’d go on to finish T-4, and now it’s another Irishman sticking up for Diamond.
“It makes my blood boil, to be honest,” Lowry told BBC Sport NI at Royal Troon before the 152nd Open Championship. “They don’t see how hard Harry works and how good he is for Rory. Just because he’s not standing in the middle of the tee box like other caddies who want to be seen and heard doesn’t mean that his voice isn’t heard by Rory.”
It’d be tough to find another Tour player who spends more time with McIlroy and Diamond than Lowry. They have been friends for years, play practice rounds together before major championships, have been Ryder Cup teammates twice (2021, 2023) and represented Ireland at the 2021 Olympics. Plus, they won the Zurich Classic as a team earlier this season.
If anyone knows how well McIlroy and Diamond work together, it’s Lowry.
For the opening round of The Open, world No. 33 Lowry tees off Thursday at 9:59 a.m. ET alongside Cameron Smith and Matt Fitzpatrick. Rory McIlroy is grouped with Max Homa and Tyrrell Hatton at 5:09 a.m.
