McIlroy recharges batteries to focus on Major ambitions

As the golfing year stretches on for some, among them world number one Jordan Spieth who is defending the Australian Open this week, the curtain has been drawn by others, including Rory McIlroy.

“I always try to draw a line in the sand at some point,” said McIlroy, who won’t reappear on tour again until the Abu Dhabi Championship in late-January, some eight weeks away.

On that flight to Abu Dhabi, McIlroy will, as he always does, scribble down his objectives for the year on the back of a boarding pass. He is secretive about them, for the most part, but unquestionably the four Major championships and the quest to complete a career Grand Slam will form part of his wish list.

Indeed, in a year that sees the return of golf to the Olympics, and an away Ryder Cup in Minnesota to boot, that boarding pass will struggle to accommodate everything.

Of how many of those goals he wrote down back in January that he was able to tick off this year, McIlroy confessed topping the Race to Dubai was the only one he managed to achieve: “Obviously I wanted to win Majors. I wanted to improve in certain areas of my game, and didn’t quite do that, but these things happen. You have to set yourself these lofty goals to try and get better.”

Get stronger

What seems certain, however, is that McIlroy will return to the tournament schedule fitter and stronger than ever.

“I want to try and get healthy and get stronger again, get my body back, because I haven’t been able to do as much in the gym as I would have liked over the past few months. I’ve got an eight-week period where I don’t have to play golf. I don’t have to worry about being sore, going and playing a round of golf. So I really want to concentrate on that,” said McIlroy.

He doesn’t intend to play any “serious” golf until he returns to warm-weather training in Dubai in the new year before heading on to Abu Dhabi.

And if he will be more careful in future about the timing of playing football with his friends, after the ankle ligament rupture which saw him miss almost two months of the season's primetime, McIlroy's intent to maintain his domination in Europe and a desire to regain global supremacy – having fallen to world number three behind Spieth and Jason Day – would appear obvious.

These three players have separated themselves from the rest in the world rankings: there is just 0.49 of a point between Spieth in first spot and McIlroy in third, while the gap from McIlroy to fourth ranked Bubba Watson is 3.7 points.

That Big Three will clearly dominate the build-up to the first Major of next year at Augusta, although McIlroy made the point, “every time you go to Augusta, there’s a lot of hype . . . and next year the narrative might be around three guys; myself going for the (career) Grand Slam again. It’s always going to be there until I get to put a green jacket on my back. It’s obviously the first real goal of the year – to try and get ready for the Masters and be in as good of shape as possible.”

Ankle injury

McIlroy’s season – disrupted as it was by that ankle injury – finished on a high in Dubai, and claiming a third Order of Merit title means he is now third in the all-time list behind

Colin Montgomerie

(eight) and Seve Ballesteros (six).

Also, McIlroy has moved to third in the European Tour's all-time career money table with winnings of €28,211,920. Only Lee Westwood (€31,301,137) and Ernie Els (€28,375,854) have won more.

For McIlroy, it is about the silverware. As he put it: “the money doesn’t motivate me the way trophies do. And I’m not saying that money’s not important. It obviously is. But there’s things more important to me and that’s collecting trophies and putting tournaments on my resumé.”