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BMW CHAMPIONSHIPSeptember 3, 2014Rory McIlroyCHERRY HILLS VILLAGE, COLORADO JOHN BUSH: We would like to welcome Rory McIlroy to the interview room. He's our 2012 BMW winner, and he enters the week No. 2 in the FedExCup playoffs. Rory, welcome back to the BMW Championship. If we can just get some thoughts on being here. RORY MCILROY: Yeah, first time for me and first time for a lot of guys being here in Denver at Cherry Hills. Saw the front nine yesterday, played all 18 today, and, yeah, looking forward to the week. It's a golf course that -- it's going to get firmer and trickier as the week goes on. Old style golf course. Going to have to just put your ball in the fairway. But, in a good position in the FedExCup as you said. And try and put in another good performance and head into Atlanta as the No. 1, and give myself the best possible chance at winning the overall thing. JOHN BUSH: We'll go right into questions. Q. You had a 430 yard drive at sea level at Aberdeen in July. How far have you gone so far up here at altitude? RORY MCILROY: It's funny, this course doesn't really allow you to hit it that far. There's not many opportunities where you can just hit driver and see how far it goes. You really need to place your ball in the fairway here. I did hit a 3-wood today 370. So, that was pretty good. But the ball is going forever. It really is. Obviously, the altitude, and then it heated up for us on back nine, as well. So, it's going a good, for me, because of my high ball flight, it's going to good 15 percent further than it usually does. Q. Two part question: First of all, we talked yesterday with a number of players, and they were talking about how the course set up for them. You mentioned high ball flight. Temperature's going to drop a little bit over the next couple of days. Talk about how that plays into your strategy for playing the course. Secondly, talk a little bit about the Ryder Cup and how you feel going into Gleneagles? RORY MCILROY: Yeah, I saw that today was going to get into the 90s, and it looks like it is not really going to go above 80 for the rest of the week. So, that might change things a little bit. But, even this morning, when it was a little cooler, it was still going a good 10 percent further. So, and especially I can -- if I can get the ball up in the air, especially off the tee, take advantage of that on some holes and get it out there. But, the strategy for the golf course is really put your ball in play, because the greens are going to get firm, the rough's pretty thick. So, you're going to want to hit approach shots from the short stuff. I feel good about the Ryder Cup. I haven't really thought much about it, to be honest. I'm trying to get these couple of weeks out of the way first, and then whenever that's the next event in my schedule, I'll start to think about it a little bit more. But anyway, excited for it. It's been a long stretch of golf, and I'm glad I've got a week off in between the TOUR Championship and that, to sort of recharge the batteries and hopefully, be a hundred percent for that week. Q. How do you handle the celebrity status you have now, No. 1 in the sport, with the fans and all that. Do you feed off that or is it kind of an annoyance? RORY MCILROY: No, it's definitely not annoyance. It's a great position to be in. Obviously, there's more demands on your time and there's -- you just have to manage your time a little bit better. But, I feel like I've been in this position for awhile now, that I know how to handle it better. But, at the start there was a little bit of getting used to it and really finding a way to -- what my priorities were. You have to practice, you have to do the things that you always did to get to that point, which was to be the best player in the world. I can't neglect that. So, that's first and foremost. Then everything else is after that. Q. What did you think of Paul McGinley's picks? Were you surprised at all at Luke's omission? RORY MCILROY: It was a flip of the coin between Luke and Lee. Each had attributes that the other didn't. Paul at the end of the day, went for experience and probably more of a talisman in the team room. What you would get with Luke is he's a great short game player, he's going to hole putts for you when he needs to. It really was a coin flip. I have obviously no -- he could have picked Lee, he could have picked Luke. It wouldn't have made a difference to me. Both would have been as good as each other. So, it's disappointing for Luke that he didn't quite make the team, but saying that, it's a very strong 12 that we have, and we have a great chance to win again. Q. When you played so well through the FedExCup a couple years ago and did not win it, was there frustration in that or just added motivation to want to win it? RORY MCILROY: I still got compensated pretty well for second place, so it wasn't too bad. But yeah, I said this at the Barclays, I feel like it's been such a great year on the golf course that if I wasn't to go ahead and win the FedExCup, it would definitely be disappointing, and it would -- I really want to cap off this summer as best as I can. I have two more weeks to push through, and even though I am feeling a little tired and I'm trying to conserve as much energy as possible, it did. Not winning a couple of years ago did add a little bit of fuel to the fire and probably makes me a little bit more determined to try to win it this year. Q. 16 winners, players that are in their 20s. What do you make of your generation, the young generation? Is there some common denominators among your group and do you enjoy being kind of the bell cow of the group? RORY MCILROY: I think it's -- I think when guys of a similar age see, say, for example, I'll take Ricky as an example. He's a similar age to me. Other guys see him do what's done in the Majors this year, and compete, and be up there every single one of them, this he see me, and obviously, I've won a few and other guys are breaking through and winning. I think that just sort of makes them believe that they can do the same thing. We're a similar age, we have mostly come from similar sort of backgrounds and played the same tournaments growing up, a few of them, especially the guys from over here went to college and went through that system. But, I think it's great to see. It's great to see that there's younger guys winning on TOUR, and it only bodes well for the future of this game. Yeah, I'm glad I'm the leader of that pack and hopefully, I'm the leader of that pack for the next 20 years, as well. Q. You played one Ryder Cup at home and away. What's it like playing at home? How much does the crowd help or can it hurt and make it harder to control emotions? RORY MCILROY: Honestly, for me it's probably a little more difficult to play at home. Just because of the expectations and you want to do so well, not just for the team and yourself, but for everyone else that's cheering you on. It feels like that you -- I love that at Medinah when you holed a putt to win a hole and there was silence. I just loved that. That was awesome. But, I think that if you do get off to a good start in matches at home, and the crowd really get behind you, it makes it very difficult for the opponents to try and get some sort of momentum back. So, it's, I guess it's a double-edged sword in some ways. I think this year for -- not just for me, but for the rest of the team, if we can really just manage our expectations, because we're going to be favorites going in, and everyone's going to assume that we are going to take another Ryder Cup. But it doesn't quite work like that. If you look at the last two Ryder Cups, Europe has only won two out of the nine sessions. There should have been 10, but obviously in Celtic Manor, that Sunday was just combined into two sessions into one and we have only won two. And that was one of the sessions we won five and a half to a half. And then the singles in 2012 that we -- they're the only two sessions that we have won. So there's obviously, there's been some tied sessions and then some sessions that have went the U.S.'s way. So, it's been tighter than people think. And I think it will be the exact same way this year. So, we just have to manage our expectations and go out there and make sure we put a lot of points and a lot of blue on the board early and go from there. Get the crowd behind us. Q. To follow-up on the FedExCup question. If you could, what change would you make to the format? Would you do anything different to alter it? RORY MCILROY: I would make Majors and WGC's throughout the regular season, I would give them more significance. More points. So, I view say, a Major win as maybe -- well, not that it really matters because everything's reset at the end anyway. So, the points are reset after this week, and we go into the TOUR Championship and you know, it makes it exciting at the end. You know if you're top-5 going in there, if you win you're going to win the overall thing. So there's -- if we want to make it exciting and have people turn up to the TOUR Championship wanting to, having to play well, then there's probably not really a better format. But -- and that's what it's all about. They're the playoffs for a reason. I would keep it the way it is. I think there might be a couple little tweaks next year. I'm not too sure. But, I have no complaints about it, even in 2012, when I didn't end up winning. Brandt was top-5 going into the TOUR Championship, and he wins, and you know what happens then, and I didn't. So, I had no complaints about that. Q. This is meant as a sort of lighthearted follow to the Ryder Cup. When you nearly missed your tee time two years ago, what was the reaction of your watch sponsor at the time? RORY MCILROY: I'm not too sure, actually. I don't know. I think that's when Omega started to pursue me pretty heavily. I don't know. Q. Did that add to the surrealism that one of your sponsors is a company that deals in time, and time was your enemy on that day. RORY MCILROY: Time was my enemy on that day. A little bit, I guess. But, I'm just glad that everything worked out well, and I got to that first tee and ended up winning my match. I would have felt terrible if it had have been the other way around. If I hadn't have made my tee time and had to forfeit a match, or I played terrible and lost. I wouldn't have felt very good. But luckily, that didn't happen, and we all moved on, and it definitely won't happen again this year. Q. How much do you know about the 1960 U.S. Open here with Hogan and Palmer and the 20-year-old Nicklaus? RORY MCILROY: I know what everyone else knows. That Palmer drove, or he was trying to drive the green everyday, and drove it on the Sunday, shot 65, won. I don't really know too much more than that though. But I know that that was 1960. Nicklaus won it in 1962. But, yeah, I don't really know. Q. Nicklaus was the 20-year-old amateur that year. RORY MCILROY: Yeah. Q. I was curious, if we had that today, who is Hogan, who is Arnie, and who is Jack? RORY MCILROY: Wow. I don't know. That's hard. Different eras, it's so hard to -- at 20, I mean 20-year-old amateur, it's sort of, I mean, you could say Jordan Spieth. But he's been on the PGA TOUR for like a year and a half. So that sort of doesn't make sense. Q. He's not as fat either. RORY MCILROY: What's that? Q. Nothing. He's not as big as Jack. RORY MCILROY: I'll tell him you said that. (Laughter.) I don't know, it's hard. Who compares in the modern day to Hogan? No one does. You can't compare anyone to Hogan. And you can't compare anyone to Arnie either. It's different eras and different charisma's and different styles of play. It's just hard. It really is. I think that's, especially the argument of, especially this Tiger/Jack argument, it's so hard to compare because they played in such different eras, the game has totally changed. So it's so hard to compare. Q. To piggyback on that question we talked about Arnold Palmer driving the green on Sunday, in the 1960 U.S. Open. Talked to Graeme McDowell yesterday and he said he wasn't sure that that was more than a 5-wood for someone like you. Do you think that equipment changes and technology changes have taken any of the teeth of Cherry Hills away or is it, because it's such a mature course, it's still going to play very, very difficult for you guys. RORY MCILROY: I think modern technology has really -- okay, we might have 526 yard par-4s out there, but today for me that was a 3-wood and an 8-iron. So it's not -- because the ball just goes so far up here, it's difficult. It has, it's taken a bit of the teeth out of what this golf course probably did have before. But all you need to do for difficult golf course is get the greens firm and get the rough up. Which they have done here. So, and a little bit of wind as well will make it tricky. You won't see guys going crazy under par. You'll still see some pretty low scores out there, but it's an old, traditional, timeless golf course, in a way; and if they want, especially with the green complexes, they can make it as tough as they want. So there's still a bit of bite there. Q. In Tom Watson's gripping wild card extravaganza last night he said that Keegan Bradley could be the American Poulter. You know both of them pretty well, do you see the similarities there? RORY MCILROY: They're both nuts. That's the first thing. (Laughter.) Yeah, Keegan gets really passionate about it. Like he really does. He's probably, yeah, if I was to compare sides, he's the guy on the U.S. team that could get anywhere close to the passion that Poulter shows, I think. Yeah, Keegan, I know Keegan a lot, I've played with him a lot down in Florida and I hang out with him and I know how badly he wanted to make that team and I was happy that, I was happy to see that he got picked. He really wants it and I'm sure he'll perform well. Q. Getting back to the course. With where we're at in the FedExCup right now, and I understand that accuracy is important, but is looking at the field, do you see anybody with the kind of do or die attitude to even go for a 59? RORY MCILROY: There's probably going to be a few guys that get off to good starts this week that will be thinking of it. Especially you can drive the first green, you can drive the third green, you got a wedge into the second, you got a wedge into the fourth, fifth's a tough hole, 7 you can get it close to the green, there's chances where you could maybe go 5- or 6-under par after nine and start to think about it. But then the back nine's got some difficult holes and I think it will be tough, even though it's got two par-5s, it it's still going to be tough to keep your round going. So, I think you're going to see some maybe 63, 64s, I don't think you're going to see much lower than that this week. Q. Between yesterday and today, what did you hit off the tee on 1 and 3. RORY MCILROY: I hit 3-wood on the first hole yesterday. Sort of pin high left. I hit driver today over, just over the back right of the green. On the third hole, I've hit 3-wood both days. JOHN BUSH: All right, Rory McIlroy, thank you, sir. RORY MCILROY: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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