Amid one of the most beautiful views in golf, Rory McIlroy stood on the 18th tee at Pebble Beach on Sunday, a three-shot lead in hand and a smile on his face. With time to soak up the moment as he waited for the fairway to clear, the 35-year-old could relax. The work he had put in this off-season and a new mindset for 2025 meant he would start his PGA Tour season with a win for the third time in the last five seasons.
So he pulled a 5-iron.
It was a conservative approach, no doubt. Yet with his play over the first 71 holes at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, McIlroy had earned the right to make that decision. In turn, it offered a glimpse into a new approach from McIlroy, one he has shared with golf fans over the last few weeks. I call it Rory 4.0.
“Ten years ago with a three-shot lead standing on the 18th tee, would I have hit 5-iron?” McIlroy pondered in his post-win press conference. “Probably not.”
With his victory at Pebble, the 35-year-old Ulsterman became the first player in 20 years to reach 27 career PGA Tour wins. He has done so with varying degrees of strategy, ability, experience and ingenuity. You can essentially group McIlroy’s career into eras, the first being “Early Rory” (leading up to his maiden major title at Congressional in 2011), then “Peak Rory” (who won back-to-back majors in 2014), followed by “Majorless Rory” (who continued to dominate in recent years without the addition of any majors). Now, it appears we may be seeing McIlroy embarking on his fourth era.
In his pre-tournament press conference Tuesday at Pebble Beach, McIlroy was asked a range of questions about TGL, slow play, Ryder Cup and LIV-PGA Tour negotiations. It was the answer to a competition-related inquiry, though, that struck a cord with me.
Asked what impressed him about Scottie Scheffler’s dominant year in 2024, Rory seemed prepared with an immediate answer. “I’ve never … this is anyone, this is Tiger, this is in the history of golf … I don’t think I’ve ever seen a golfer play as many bogey-free rounds as Scottie. He just doesn’t make mistakes. It’s so impressive. He plays the right shot, at the right time, over and over again.”
McIlroy isn’t wrong. If you look at “Bogey Avoidance” on the PGA Tour over the last four seasons, you can see that Rory tracks behind his current rivals in Scheffler and Xander Schauffele.
So, how exactly does an elite golfer make less mistakes?
Well, we might have just seen how, with McIlroy’s performance at Pebble Beach.
Short game
Last month, McIlroy spoke ahead of his 2025 debut at the DP World Tour's Hero Dubai Desert Classic. He was asked what improvements he was looking to make for the new year. The question was well-timed, as McIlroy later admitted he had just completed a “deep dive” into his stats, and noticed a trend in his play around the green.
“I would say my short game was up-and-down last year. I’d have some really good weeks and then I’d have some stinkers around the greens, so I want to try and get that a little more consistent.”
While McIlroy ranked 17th in scrambling on the PGA Tour last year, his performance around the greens has shown the inconsistency he referenced over the last five years.
The famously small greens at Pebble Beach were always going to present a good test of his off-season work on his short game. And he passed that test. Over the weekend at Pebble, McIlroy missed 11 greens and saved par 10 times. Additionally, he saved par from three of the four greenside bunkers hit found.
Indeed, if there’s one way to limit bogeys, it's tightening up your wedge game around the greens. Consider this: Schauffele set the PGA Tour record for bogey avoidance in 2024, dropping shots on less than 9.4 percent of the holes he played. He also led the tour in Scrambling, saving par at a rate of nearly 71 percent everytime he missed a green.
Rory’s ability to get up-and-down over the weekend at Pebble lead allowed him to stay in contention and ultimately take the title. That level of short game will undoubtedly see him lift more trophies in 2025.
A conservatively aggressive approach off the tee
Let me explain: If you were keeping track of the golf at all on Sunday, you would have certainly seen the coverage of McIlroy’s tee shot on the par-5 14th hole. His 340-yard bomb, hit with a 189-mph ball speed and 170-foot apex, found the middle of the fairway and set up an eagle that ultimately clinched McIlroy the title.
McIlroy’s length and power off the tee is well known at this point. Each week on tour, average driving distance is measured on two holes, typically playing in different directions to allow for a variance in wind. On those holes last week, McIlroy averaged 336.7 yards.
That was 17 yards further than anyone else in the 80-man field all week.
However, McIlroy’s discipline off the tee was also notable.
If you look at "all drives" McIlroy hit in the final round, his average driving distance was less than 286 yards. A number that doesn't feature in the top 15 longest hitters in that category. A clear indictation of a more conservative strategy. He clearly has the ability to hit the "full send" driver, but appears to be picking and choosing when to unleash it more than in recent years.
The Northern Irishman admitted after his round that a younger version of himself would have likely pulled driver on the short, 337-yard par-4 fourth hole as well as the 11th and 15th holes. However, with a new mindset and approach for this year, McIlroy chose the conservative route.
For the week, McIlroy also hit more than two-thirds of the fairways to rank inside the top 20 in driving accuracy, not something we are used to discussing when it comes to his game. In his last eight seasons on the PGA Tour, he has finished below average in driving accuracy, ranking each season outside the top 100.
It's this ability to leverage his length, where appropriate, with a more conservative strategy on the majority of holes, that could lead McIlroy towards the kind of form he clearly admires of Scottie Scheffler in 2024.
Pairing an improved short game with a wiser, more conservative strategy off the tee appears to be the game plan behind this Rory 4.0 version for 2025. And it certainly worked at Pebble Beach.
With a goal of making less mistakes and carding fewer bogeys, McIlroy dropped just one shot over the final round rounds. Compare that with five from Shane Lowry and eight from Sepp Straka and you can see how McIlroy was able to stay the course and clinch his 27th Tour title.
The last question he was asked on Sunday night was about any career numbers or tournaments he has his eye on.
“I’ve always felt like I’ll play for as long as I want to play and as hard as I want to play and whatever the numbers add up to, they’ll add up to,” McIlroy said. “But to me, there’s specific things and specific tournaments I want to have on my C.V. when it’s all said and done.”
Could that specific tournament be in April?
A reminder, it’s 63 days until the first round of the Masters.
Is Rory 4.0 ready to finally achieve immortality in the game? We’ll see.