Players Championship
Players 2025: Rory McIlroy has a go-to tee shot for Sawgrass. Can he make it work?
Rory McIlroy plays his second shot on the 18th hole out of the pine straw during the Players Championship.
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PONTE VEDRA BEACH — There is a phrase used in the PGA Tour’s Shotlink system that we’ve rarely noticed: “tree outline.” Maybe it’s more prominent in the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass because there are several nurseries worth of trees here, and in these claustrophobic confines, they come into play often.
Rory McIlroy came into this week with a solid plan of using a cut off the tee that would hopefully keep him away from too many “tree outline” shots. He wasn't able to pull it off in the first round on Thursday, but it hardly mattered because the rest of the Ulsterman’s game rescued him. Despite frequent scenes of fans in the big galleries ducking to protect themselves while McIlroy found only four fairways, the World No. 2 shot a five-under-par 67 to stand tied for fourth after Day 1.
The score matched the third-best opening card at Sawgrass for McIlroy, whose best-ever first round here was last year’s 65 (though the 2019 Players winner followed with a 73 and eventually tied for 19th).
“Sort of rode my luck out there a little bit,” McIlroy said.
McIlroy battled his tee shots to the very end, and it was at the par-4 18th where his ability to escape shined. After his 3-wood tee shot traveled 298 yards into the right pine straw and trees, McIlroy punched a 5-iron through an opening, the approach finding the green seven feet from the hole. He then rolled in the birdie putt to close things out.
“It was a bonus to get it up on the green and hole the putt was a lovely way to finish,” McIlroy said.
McIlroy drove the ball wildly in tying for 15th in the Arnold Palmer Invitational last week, ranking 20th in strokes gained/off-the-tee when for the season he sits at No. 1. He went back to his old TaylorMade driver for the Sunday round at Bay Hill and, in a rare occurrence, lost strokes to the field that day off the tee.
This week, he’s been working on a left-to-right cut because “missing right off the tee here on any hole is way better than missing left. Just sort of hitting this cut sort of up into the wind, and obviously you don’t need to hit it too far here.”
To McIlroy’s credit, he mostly did deliver cuts, even if they went a bit too far offline on occasion—seven of his misses off the tee found either right rough or fairway bunkers.
“I think a little clearer on my sort of strategy and what I want to do off the tee,” he said. “Again, this is such a different test than Bay Hill and what it demands. The tee shots that I did stand up there with a driver and release—like 2, 16, 15 even, they missed left. So just whatever way the pattern is in my swing at the minute, I'm trying to hold everything off. That's fine; that's what I did here in 2019 and it worked well. Hitting that cut shot into play here is never really going to get you into trouble.”
Asked about how expected the Sawgrass course change over the next few days, which are supposed to be dry through Saturday, McIlroy noted that the greens weren’t as firm as he thought they’d be.
“Fairways and run-offs and the surrounds of the greens are getting a little bit firmer, but the greens still feel a little bit mushy,” he said. “Hopefully it firms up. I'd really like it to. Obviously, it puts a premium on getting the ball in play, something that I didn't do as well today.
“But I would like the conditions to get a little firmer as the week goes on. Maybe a little bit of wind and more dry conditions, it'll get there by the weekend.”