rory mcilroy pga tour game best clubs to use

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6. EA SPORTS Rory McIlroy PGA TOUR Pro Tour

If you haven't created a player yet you will have to do this before you start your Pro Tour. Once you've designed your player you will have to pick your bonus, this is basically the style of play that your player will use. I picked power to start off with but you can pick what you like.

The next thing you want to do is to go to 'Career History' then 'Round Type' and set it to quick rounds. By doing this you only play the important holes in stead of full 18 hole rounds. You still have to complete the 4 rounds in a tournament but it will be 4 or 5 holes as oppose to 18.

Web.com Tour Championship

This is the first event you play, it's like a qualifier to see who can qualify for a PGA tour card. Make sure you do quite well. Top 20 should be good enough but aim to win it. It took a score of -6/-7 on short rounds to win for me. If you place high enough you will unlock.

Earn your PGA TOUR card

Career Builder Challenge

This next event isn't a PGA event either but it will give you some ranking points for competing. This is held on the TPC Sawgrass course which is a very difficult to course to do well on so don't worry about winning this it is not as important. Just do your best. It was -14/-15 to win and I came 3rd.

Bioware Classic

This is an easier course to play so you should aim to win this event. On my game it was -10/-11 to win. As this is a PGA Tour event if you win you will get.

Win a PGA TOUR event

Now I chose to skip the next event, you don't have to play every event however you have to be careful with this as you want to aim to be top of the FedEx points by the end of the season and there is an achievement for being top of the EA Sports rankings a one point during the season. To view your rankings go to 'Career History' > 'Rankings'. You can look at both tables here. I would recommend looking at these often, especially the FedEx as the #1 EA Sport ranking should come naturally if you are doing well.

Arnold Palmer Invitational

This is the next event I played. You don't have to win these smaller events as there are no achievements tied to them however the more you play and the better you do the more ranking points you will accumulate. -19/-20 to win on this one.

If you won that last event you should be on around 1000 FedEx points and be around 300 to 400 ahead of second place. I would recommend that you aim to stay about this far ahead throughout the season, so you need to chose if you want to skip certain events or not but I will list all the events that I played and when there is an achievement tied to winning. Just be wary that you might do better or worse than me so might need to play more or less events than me.

At this point if you're struggling to win maybe try adjusting your gameplay style to 'Classic' or 'Arcade' or adjust your custom style to easier settings.

EA Sports Invitational

I skipped 2 events to get to this. There is an achievement tied to winning this tournament so make sure you win if not you'll have to do another season to get to this point and try again. One thing you should consider if you're struggling is setting the round type to 'Full Rounds' this will give you more chances to get a better score and it will be a lot easier to win. Obviously this takes a lot longer but what you can do is do 2 or 3 rounds on quick rounds then see where you are, if you don't think you're going to win then set the last round to full and blow away the competition.

You may or may not have noticed but you will have started to unlock better equipment. If you go to 'Equipment' then 'Optimize Clubs' it will automatically equip the best clubs that you currently have. You can do all this manually by going through all your equipment and setting it to what you want. Do that if you please but I chose to save time and just use the optimize clubs feature.

-9/-10 was about the score required to win and if you do you will bag yourself an achievement.

Win the EA SPORTS Spring Invitational

You should be way ahead in the FedEx rankings by this point.

I skipped the next 2 events and the next one I played was.

The Players Championship

You don't need to win this event but it provides some good points for the rankings. Required about -14/-15 to win this for me.

Now at this point I was seconds in both of the ranking tables so I chose to play the next small event. It is up to you if you want to or not, you don't have to play all the same events as I did.

Peach Invitational

I chose to play this and it was -11/-12 to win.

This is the second major so therefore another achievement for winning, remember to optimize your clubs before you start. This is a tough course to play so don't be afraid to set the last round or 2 to full rounds to help. It took a score of -3/-4 to win here. Good luck. If you win you should also now have reached number 1 in the EA rankings therefore double achievement! If you don't manage it this time you will in the next couple of events you win.

Win the U.S. Open

Reach #1 in EASG Rankings

I skipped all the way up to next major event which is The Open. This means there is another achievement for winning this so remember the tips from the previous majors and you shouldn't have any trouble. The course is a lot easier for this event and to be honest it should be fairly easy for you. About -13/-14 to win on this.

Win The Open Championship

Now if you have managed to get the Number 1 ranking achievement and you are way ahead in the FedEx points then I would just skip straight up to the next major which is the PGA Championship. This is what I did but if you need to play another event don't be afraid to do so as it can only help as you don't want to have to play another season.

PGA Championship

Now play this and make sure you win to earn another achievement. Took a score of about -13/-14 to win for me.

Win the PGA Championship

At this point you should only have the FedEx cup achievements left to win in Pro Tour mode. I skipped the next 2 events which were EA charity invitational and Pittsburgh Invitational.

The next 3 events are all FedEx Play Off events. This does not mean you need to play them to earn the achievement however they offer a lot of points to the winner so be wary that someone may overtake you if you don't play them. My advice would be to look at the rankings after every event just to be sure. I personally only played 1 of the Play Off events as Rory McIlroy overtook me at one point. You do not need to go into the final event leading the standings but it would guarantee you the achievement after that event. I was 2nd in the rankings but I beat the player ahead of me in the Finale so that ensured I overtook him in the rankings.

Tour Championship

This is the final event of the season and you must play and win this to get the last achievement. You will only get this if you are number 1 in the FedEx cup points after this event as well.

To get this you have to:

• Win the Tour Championship
• Be at number 1 in the FedEx rankings after the last event.

This took a score of about -15/-16 to win for me and once you have won this you will have finished Pro Tour mode.

Win the FedExCup

Now just one section left to do which is Challenge Mode.

Rory McIlroy Clubs: What’s In the Bag?

Rory McIlroy has become a favorite of many golf fans over the last few years. TaylorMade saw the opportunity to capitalize on his popularity back in 2017, and he’s been with them ever since.

As a result, Rory has a full bag of 14 TaylorMade clubs. And he has used them to top many events, including the Masters .

Read on to learn the Rory McIlroy clubs that he uses on tour.

Rory McIlroy WITB: What Clubs Does Rory McIlroy Use in 2024?

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For the 2021 season, Rory McIlroy used both the TaylorMade Sim2 and Sim2 MAX drivers, but now he’s using the newer and better Stealth Plus driver. You’ll find plenty of other PGA Tour pros using this driver, including Colin Morikawa and Tiger Woods .

The Stealth range from TaylorMade has a huge sweet spot with a highly flexible face for incredible ball speeds.  The Plus version has a more compact profile than the standard models and is more suited to low handicap players (like PGA pros). It also has a 10g sliding weight to mold shot shape bias.

Here are the exact specs for Rory’s driver

• 9º at 8.25º
• Fujikura Ventus Black 6 X shaft
• lie angle 59º
• D4.5 swing weight

Rory is perhaps best known for his huge drives and fairway shots. So, it makes sense for him to have a set of woods that allow him to crack huge yardage numbers. He currently uses two TaylorMade Stealth Plus fairway woods with the following specs:

• Loft: 15º Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Black 8 X
• Loft: 19º Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Black 9 X

He often forgoes a 5 wood and instead opts for a hybrid, but more recently he’s been sticking to two fairway woods.

McIlroy had been trying out a few different sets of TaylorMade irons but recently switched back to the Rors Proto series. These have a carbon steel clubhead and were introduced in 2017 for many TaylorMade Staff players. The specs of Rory’s irons have irons have remained similar since then.

In this series, he uses a 4 iron to a pitching wedge with Project X Rifle 7.0 shafts. They have similar to standard 4° increments with lie angles that shift at a rate of 0.5°.

The Rory McIlroy setup iron is a TaylorMade P770  3 iron with a Project X Rifle 7.0 shaft.

Rory McIlroy golf clubs include MG3 wedges, which are a recently upgraded TaylorMade MG2 successor. He uses two wedges:

Both of them have a Project X Rifle 6.5 shaft. You’ll find that many PGA Tour golfers use a softer shaft like this, so they have a bit more feel.

It’s possible he may start including a 48º wedge again as he has done in the past. But for now, he’s sticking to just two wedges.

• Superstroke Pistol GT Tour Grip

Stating that he needs a more forgiving putter nowadays, Rory McIlroy has moved away from using blade putters. He said that although the good days with a blade putter like the Scotty Cameron 0009m he used to use are excellent, the bad days are worse.

He’s had a lot more success on the greens with the TaylorMade Spider of late.

These putters make it a breeze to stay on line and are super forgiving. They’re perfect for PGA golfers and high handicap players alike.

The TaylorMade TP5X golf balls are low spin and work perfectly for a player like McIlroy that really needs to capitalize on his strong fairway game.

Since they hold up their spin, they have minimal jump.

McIlroy stamps his balls with #22. So if you want to be exactly the same, you’ll need a custom order.

These are multi-compound grips with plenty of texture and tack that provides comfort and control. You’ll find most of the PGA Tour pros use these grips.

McIlroy has rocked the Nike Air Zoom Victory Tour 2 golf shoes  since the 2021 Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship. Although he sticks to the one model of shoes, he frequently wears different colors ranging from special edition ones to more traditional white or black versions.

He also wears a Nike glove and apparel to match.

Since Rors Proto irons are custom clubs, we included the price for TaylorMade P790 Irons instead as they are the most similar. To match Rory McIlroy in the bag, you’ll need a bit of money, but you don’t have to be the richest golfer in the world .

Here’s a breakdown of the approximate costs of Rory McIlroy’s clubs at the time of writing this article, not including a Rory McIlroy golf bag:

Rory McIlroy clubs are all TaylorMade as he is a sponsored golfer. His bag is filled with some of the best TaylorMade clubs on the market. You’ll find similar products in many of the other Taylormade players’ bags too.

If you’d like to learn more about what other PGA Tour pros put in their bag, check out these guides:

• What’s in Brook Koepka’s Bag?
• Dustin Johnson’s Golf Clubs

Chris Daniel

Chris's love for golf is only rivaled by his wanderlust. A globetrotter at heart, He’s played courses throughout Europe and Asia and at home in NSW, Australia. With a writing style as smooth as his golf swing, he’ll help you find the right gear to match your skill level and style. You can connect with Chris on LinkedIn .

• Chris Daniel https://www.golfspan.com/author/chrisdaniels The Best Budget Golf Clubs & Sets Under $350
• Chris Daniel https://www.golfspan.com/author/chrisdaniels 7 Wood Distance, When To Use, & Best Clubs
• Chris Daniel https://www.golfspan.com/author/chrisdaniels Golf Wedge Distance Chart: Average Distances for Most Golfers
• Chris Daniel https://www.golfspan.com/author/chrisdaniels How to Polish Golf Clubs (+ 4 Best Polish Reviews)

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Rory McIlroy PGA Tour Tips and Strategies

Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is available now for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and it marks a return to golfing greatness for EA Sports. With over a dozen courses available, a handful of pros from the Pro Golfers Association, and a number of other modes to play online and off, it’s got something to offer for both golf lovers and casual players alike.

Here are some tips that will help you get into the game, so you can master your swing and nail birdie after birdie…and perhaps even a few eagles as well.

Getting the Most Out of Your Swing

We’ll be covering the mechanics of the three swing systems available in the game in a later article, but, for now, we’ll talk about the basics when it comes to keeping your ball from rolling out of bounds.

First off, you’ll want to use the preview button – either Triangle or Y button, depending on your version – before every swing. Even if you think you’ve got your shot figured out, you’ll want to look further down the course for bunkers or water hazards. When you play on an easier setting, you’ll actually see a blue line that shows where the ball is going to go. Use this as a guidance tool before you smack one off the tee.

Also, keep a close eye on wind. If gusts are coming up over five miles an hour, you’re likely to see an effect on the ball’s path as it’s in the air. This, along with the distance your shot will take, enables you to adjust your aim in preview mode before hitting the ball. Use it every chance you get, even if the course looks deceptively open. You never know when it isn’t going to roll your way.

In addition, don’t forget the other tools available to you. When you go in for your back swing, you can hit the X or A button (depending on version) multiple times to add more power to your shot. This is especially useful on par 5’s, when you’re trying to get as much distance covered as possible getting to the green. You’ll still want to make adjustments, but power certainly makes all the difference.

Don’t forget your spin as well. While the ball is in the air, hold the analog stick in the direction you want the spin to go and tap the X or A button. Doing it multiple times will put a backspin, side spin or forward spin on your shot, allowing you to adjust for when it lands. This can make all the difference in getting an easier putt – or staying out of bounds.

Those are some of the basics to keep in mind, but we’ll cover them more in-depth with our swing article next week.

The Power of Putting

When you do get to the green, sometimes you’ll need to putt once or twice in order to get the ball in the hole. Now, the putting system is different from previous games, so make sure you pay attention to this.

As you first line up your putt, you’ll see a guidance line that leads to the hole. Be sure to press the Triangle or Y button to get a closer look at the terrain – sometimes, you’ll see curves or uphill/downhill changes that make a difference in the ball’s momentum. From there, line up your putt with quick adjustments.

The best thing you can do when it comes to getting proper putts is to aim your putter just where the guideline begins to break on the course. You’ll have to adjust speed along the way, but this gives you an idea of where the ball will curve after you hit it. It’s not always a guaranteed success, but, at the very least, you can get it closer to the hole so your second shot is a tap-in.

Don’t hit the ball too hard, unless you’re facing an uphill run. In that case, feel free to make an adjustment of a couple of feet on distance, and it’ll roll closer to the hole. Otherwise, it’s going to go right past it – and you could very well face an even worse putt than the one you just went through. Make sure to get the proper power going.

Coming Out of the Rough or Sand

Finally, you’re going to get in some out-of-bounds trouble every once in a while, like if you misjudge a shot or send it flying a little too fast. In this case, on the easier setting, your club will automatically be chosen for you, so that you can just aim for where you want the ball to go back on the course and swing away. Otherwise, you’ll want to find the right club for the job.

Avoid the wood clubs. These are meant for power on a smooth surface and get almost nothing done coming out of hazards. Instead, stick with your power and sand wedge, depending on how close you are to the hole. A good iron may also be used, given that the distance is right, but otherwise just stick with the smaller wedges. With these, you’ll get back on the course, where you can continue your stride towards the green. It beats leaving a divot and having your ball only go a few feet.

Good luck – and go get those aces!

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Rory McIlroy’s best golf tips could seriously help your game

Rory McIlroy's best tips can help your game today.

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If you are looking to learn from the pros, like Rory McIlroy, for example, you are in luck. Sky Sports compiled some of McIlroy’s best tips ever into the below video, and they’re perfect for amateur players.

In simple terms and quick tidbits, the World No. 1 explains how to hit a stinger, how to keep your club on plane, and how to hit a fade on command.

First, McIlroy is asked about the stinger. He walks the audience through his step-by-step process to produce the desired shot. He pulls out a 2-iron (maybe us amateurs won’t be using that club) and talks about the steps. You can see them below.

Shift the ball back in your stance, grip down on the club, and put most of your bodyweight on your front foot.

2. Takeaway

When making a golf swing with the intention of hitting a shot with a lower ball flight, you should feel like your chest stays over the golf ball for a longer period of time. This feeling will allow you to keep your weight forward throughout the swing.

As you swing down on the ball, you should feel pressure down your left leg and foot. By keeping your weight forward, you too can produce a mesmerizing stinger.

Next, McIlroy discusses his warm-up routine. Typically he and the other pros do some sort of warm-up in the locker rooms to activate their muscles. He mentions he takes less time than most of his colleagues, only warming up for 20-25 minutes and maintaining a focus on whatever he’s working on in his swing. On the range, he loves to practice different ball flights and patterns and imagine the course he is preparing to play.

McIlroy says his biggest focus is to keep his takeaway on plane. If the club is not in the right spot on his takeaway, he’s forced to lift up, which causes his elbow to bow out and the club to come across the line, ultimately creating an inconsistent swing path. While warming up, he suggests players with this problem should take the club back to the proper path, pause, then complete the golf swing to ingrain that club position in muscle memory.

Finally, McIlroy is asked to hit a fade on command. He explains that in order to get the ball to move from left to right, you need to swing more to the left. For him, it’s important to exaggerate that movement so he doesn’t end up hitting a giant hook.

Check out the full video above to see each tip in action.

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Rory McIlroy PGA Tour Review

After a brief hiatus, the PGA Tour video game series is back with a brand new face to front it in the form of the next big thing in golf, Rory McIlroy. Rory McIlroy PGA Tour fills the golfing void after a two year waiting period and becomes the first PGA Tour game on the latest generation of consoles. Can the Northern Irish hot shot propel the series to heights never seen before?

The short answer is no. There are many reasons to back this up as you’ll find in this review, with none of them being because of Rory himself so he can rest easy… for now.

Where do I begin? Well, let’s dive straight into the career mode which is usually the meat of any sports game and it should be no different here with PGA Tour Pro Career. Unfortunately it seems as though someone has forgotten this, due to it actually being a rather bare bones effort if I’m completely honest. Sure you can create yourself a male or a female golfer but there are serious omissions after this. The fact you won’t be facing off against other female golfers is odd should you choose a female character, however the fact your career will never cross paths with The Masters tournament is just plain stupid. Not having Augusta National as a playable course doesn’t seem viable when it’s arguably one of the most well known and hugely popular courses of all time.

Off the course there’s also very little to look at in terms of stats and your career progression is shown merely as a level number. Each level up you earn will unlock new items or clothing which is kind of nice. It doesn’t satisfy my need to choose where my skills are improved though; instead I’m left with watching the game decide where to add an attribute point here and there or mildly boosting an area of my golf skills myself. But hey, at least customizing the clubs in your bag is present, as is being able to decide on your golfer’s outfit, so that’s something.

During your career you’ll be expected to play four rounds on each course which can take a while on full rounds length. Alternatively you can switch it to quick rounds which will be over after a few holes and helps the whole process less monotonous. Four full rounds of Wolf Creek in a row is just torture, even though it’s one of my favourite courses.

Keep winning events and it won’t be long before you’ll be ranked No.1 in the world, ready to compete in the FedEx cup. That’s everything need to know about the PGA Tour Pro Career though.

The other main aspect that has to be mentioned is the way the game is played. There are three ways of playing; Arcade, Classic or Tour. Depending on whether you prefer to use the analog stick to swing the club or test your timing skills with the old 3-click method, every gamer will be satisfied when it comes to the control scheme. The Tour controls will suit the hardcore players as it removes assists and puts emphasis on the quickness of your swinging.

While we’re on the positivity train, the use of the Frostbite 3 engine, that was used in the Battlefield franchise first, brings about some high quality visuals. The courses all look great, from the greens to the trees and the surrounding canyons. It’s also quickened up the loading times between holes. These are the first signs that Rory McIlroy PGA Tour has arrived on the new generation of consoles. The only signs in fact.

Night Club Challenge takes the world of golf and gives it a makeover for a whole load of skill based challenges. This is the best mode of the entire game, using mostly fictional courses and Wolf Creek. It’ll test your metal as you hit balls through things like fluorescent hoops high in the sky for example. It feels like more of a rave than a night club, with some darn crazy ideas and boosts to make this a great set of fantasy challenges. These boosts could be as simple as propelling the ball higher with Rocket boost, pausing a shot in mid-air to avoid obstacles and even getting the ball the stick to the ground upon landing.

With exactly 174 challenges to complete and earn up to three stars on, there’s plenty to do. However when you consider this is a golf simulator game, the fantasy side shouldn’t be the main draw.

When all else fails there’s always Play Now to play a full round, a front 9 or back 9 on the course of your choice with up to four players. Don’t be expecting many game types though except for Match Play and Stroke Play. Long gone are the likes of Bingo, Bango, Bongo or Skins.

What about the courses on offer? There are just eight real life courses to choose from and four fantasy ones, including the standout Paracel Storm. Another step backwards when you think back to the sheer amount on offer in previous games. Celtic Manor, Augusta, Pebble Beach, Valhalla, Torrey Pines, are all gone. The list of well known courses left out is ridiculous and I’m not even scratching the surface with those named. This is EA SPORTS, a true giant in the gaming industry and they’re cutting back on courses, having to create their own to bolster the amount on disc. There aren’t even that many real golfers on the roster to play with.

Switching to the online side and there’s not an awful lot to say. Head2Head Ranked (or unranked) pits you against online opponents in rounds on courses voted for by those in the lobby. I wouldn’t bother playing against others though as it makes characters invisible most of the time, following the ball trajection of opposition doesn’t work too well and it all feels a bit lonely. You can also play in either weekly or daily tournaments that are set up to register your best round on. With so few courses and very limited weather options, there is a real lack of variety and they’ll become samey in no time.

Rory McIlroy PGA Tour takes great strides forwards on the way it plays as a golf game and visually it can rarely be faulted, apart from a few stuffed looking animals wandering around. On the whole though it leaps backwards on features, courses and golfers, hell they’ve even got made up cups on the PGA Tour to help fill the emptiness. As a part of the PGA Tour game series, it is a mere shadow of its former self.

This is not the greatest golfing game in the world; this is just a tribute.

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[…] for pound features you’re going to find in the gaming world and today, with the addition of Rory McIlroy PGA TOUR into the Vault, it’s got better […]

I very much agree with your review. The golf game has lost its soul (Like most EA titles these days), and with it that addictive factor that had me playing till early hours of the morning on Tiger Woods PGA 9 – 12 (and then they started getting derailed). Even when it comes to the graphics, they look pretty, but the “jumping” of shadows and object resolution tends to spoil the illusion. And yes, you nailed it on that “stuffed animals” comment. All in all, this feels like a demo, or a beta. It feels unpolished, unbalanced and unfocused.

Rumour has it that this won’t be a yearly release any more – a step in the right direction – with hopefully some free DLC and expansions (and patches to fixes some bugs I’ve come across) in between.

At least we know now why PGA tour wasn’t even mentioned in EA E3 presentation, but here’s hoping that EA will redeem itself when I go play a round of golf with my best bud next week. You can still play a round with specific friends, right?

Cheers for the comment. I hope there’s at least one more in the yearly release schedule that will actually last longer than this one will. They’re supposed to add a few free course via dlc over time but they should’ve been on disc already. Yeah luckily you can still play an unranked round with friends!

I thought I’d come back here to recycle a comment I made on facebook after playing the game for a while now, and trying the unranked match with a friend:

——————————————————————————-

I’m so VERY disappointed in this game. My friend and I have been playing EA golf titles for ages, 99% of the time with just the two of us, talking crap on the fairways and greens, cheering the good shots and jeering the mistakes. In fact, the whole reason he bought his Xbox One was so that we could play PGA Tour together again.

Now the new H2H system has completely negated the fun bits of watching each other’s shots, feeling that excitement of close calls, the disappointment of the bunker. The ONLY option is what was formerly known as “stroke simultaneously” where you just happen to be on the same course… big bloody deal. EA took the fun out of the game.

I could live with the lack of courses, the “beta” feel of the game, the watered down options, useless celebrations, stuffed animals, settings etc compared to previous years. The fact that EA spoiled what was a Thursday night tradition for years between best friends? Not so much.

I can only hope a lot of patches, free DLC, improvements are incoming. Maybe you could do an article on everyone’s outrage 🙂

Completely agree with most of those points, I’d reckon an article on everyone’s outrage would be rather explosive! Thing is that even if they make improvements on this one it’s too little too late really. Games should be releasing at its very best with minor bugs at most to be patched.

Agreed, which is exactly why I think people trying to get rid of the pre-order culture are on to something..

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Rory McIlroy PGA Tour review

It's (probably not) in the game.

With Tiger Woods experiencing the kind of career downturn that would have Messrs Torres and Falcao nodding sympathetically, it's no wonder EA has opted to drop the fairway-dodging flop for its flagship golf series, replacing him with the more successful (and marketable) Rory McIlroy. Surely, then, this is the ideal opportunity for a fresh start, and a series seemingly content to coast along on past successes would be revitalised by its prodigiously talented star?

You could forgive yourself for getting a little excited after the hyperbolic introduction. "Limitless!" chirrups Rich Lerner, like a man triumphantly declaring his favourite Bradley Cooper film. "The ability to break free, to experience golf in ways you never thought possible." What could this mean? My mind raced. An infinite number of procedurally-generated courses? The ability to play anti-gravity space golf against a sentient blancmange using giraffes as clubs? Apparently not. It turns out that "taking your game to levels once only dreamed of" involves little more than pitch-and-putt on a course surrounded by reused Battlefield assets and a mode that might as well be called Rory McIlroy's Mario Golf.

And, it transpires, "limitless" isn't so much an exaggeration as a bald-faced lie. Because EA Sports Rory McIlroy PGA Tour Turbo HD Remix has fewer courses, golfers, modes and features than its predecessor. Tiger's last outing had five women from the LPGA Tour; they've been unceremoniously dropped here, as has roughly half the roster of male golfers. There are 12 courses, when two years ago we had 20 (heck, it's two fewer than Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 managed). Gone are the detailed character customisation options for your career golfer, replaced instead by a handful of preset avatars, most of which look like they've been designed by someone who's never seen a human face, but once had one described to them over a Skype call from a noisy venue with particularly flaky wi-fi.

In fact, the career mode as a whole is significantly undernourished. I qualified for the PGA Tour after placing second in my first round as an amateur, and then joylessly worked my way through a series of disconnected tournaments. There's no sense of pageantry surrounding the big competitions, and very little fanfare when you win a tournament: you get a dry text report with a trite quote or two from your golfer. Your stats will steadily rise, and occasionally you'll unlock some more branded gear, but otherwise there's little sense of progress - not least because there's no tangible record of your recent achievements, just a series of rudimentary stat tables. The Highlights tab, meanwhile, simply collects reports of completed rounds and sponsorship deals. In an age of "Xbox, record that" and Share buttons, perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that you can't watch or save replays of your best shots within the game, but it's disappointing not to have the option.

It's far from the only thing that's missing. There are no practice rounds in Career mode, no optional objectives to complete for XP boosts. In multiplayer - online or off - you can only select between Stroke Play and Match Play. There's no Best Ball, no Alternate Shot, no Four Ball, no Skins. No Skins! EA Tiburon has promised several free updates to the game that will add new courses and features, though I'm not sure that compensates for the absence of options that have been an integral part of the series for years. Even the Country Clubs from Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 have been removed.

This might be less of a problem if what remained was a noticeable improvement on previous entries. It isn't. The courses, rendered in the Frostbite engine, look good for the most part, but there are obvious performance issues throughout. It's never a good sign when a game has pop-in on the title screen and so it proves: foliage will often appear from nowhere, and there's a sporadic shimmering effect in certain areas. Presentational sloppiness is pervasive. Menus suffer from noticeable delays, sluggish transitions and weird little inconsistencies. Even the claim of no loading times isn't strictly true - though they're appreciably brief, interstitial shots of leaderboards, your golfer and close-ups of the next hole number stall you from teeing off.

At least the commentary from Rich Lerner and Frank Nobilo offers some enlightening facts. I now know, for example, that Tom Watson once won the Open at Royal Troon, that Royal Troon was the site at which Tom Watson won the Open, and that one of the great Open champions at Royal Troon is Tom Watson - all from one 18-hole round. It's a pity they don't have more lines, as their commentary is fine and surprisingly naturalistic - there are even a couple of minor stumbles and grammatical flubs which sound like normal conversation rather than obviously scripted soundbites (though you'll still hear a few of those).

All of these problems are undoubtedly damaging, and all the more irritating for the fact that underneath it all it still plays a solid game of golf. The tutorial, or Prologue, is a nice bit of business which takes you through the three different swing types while allowing you to play key moments from the closing stages of a tightly-fought Open as McIlroy faces off against Martin Kaymer. Key shots and holes are interspersed with observations from the man himself delivered to camera. It's a neat idea that gives you a sense of occasion that's missing elsewhere. How odd that EA Tiburon should reserve it for the tutorial.

Also worth noting is the degree with which you can customise your swing. I'm a fan of the classic three-click system employed in many other golf games, though the gauge moves a little too slowly for my tastes here, and so I quickly reverted to the traditional analogue swing. As someone who played Tiger for many years on PlayStation 2 and 3, I was initially surprised at how sensitive it was - the comparative lack of deadzone on the DualShock 4 means any slight deviation from a perfectly straight down-and-up motion can see you slice drives into the heavy rough - though once you've acclimatised, you'll likely want to switch to Tour mode, which is more responsive and complex still, while offering fewer aim assists. The grid overlay on greens still doesn't give you the most useful read of the topography of the putting surface, and so I retained the aiming guideline for putting - even though it's actively unhelpful for any shot that breaks both ways on its way to the hole. Still, EA Sports isn't the only developer that needs to work on its short game, and I appreciated the ability to remove the training wheels at my own pace.

Strangely, one of the most successful additions is the one that feels most out of place. The Night Club Challenge provides a number of bite-sized objectives with a variety of outlandish power-ups and features like turbo boosts, portals and sticky balls. Some stages are more like croquet than golf, while one objective, where you manually guide your ball through rings to top-up boost power en route to distant score markers, fleetingly reminded me of the brilliant Monkey Target. With three stars to collect on each challenge, it feels as if it was designed as a mobile spin-off - and might actually be a better fit on smartphones.

Its inclusion can be read one of two ways. Perhaps it was added to bulk up an otherwise insubstantial package, or perhaps EA Sports is targeting an audience which doesn't actually like the real sport that much. There's further evidence of this elsewhere: the default option for Career mode is Quick Rounds, which only lets you play "the most important holes" while determining your progress elsewhere based on your existing stats and form.

The assumption seems to be that most players won't have the desire or the stamina to play a full round - though in light of the limited number of courses, it may simply be a way to minimise repetition. Either way, EA Tiburon has produced a game hardly befitting a player of McIlroy's talents. The so-called "next generation of golf" looks uncomfortably similar to the last, and there's substantially less of it. Only the quality of the underlying game saves this from the ignominy of an Avoid sticker.

Read this next

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Rory McIlroy PGA Tour Review

Rory mcilroy pga tour.

Is Rory’s console debut headed for the green or straight into the rough?

• Satisfying, flexible controls
• Solid graphics and sound
• Fun fantasy courses and Night Club mode
• Limited course and player selection
• Fewer customisation options
• Lack of solo and multiplayer modes

Key Specifications

• Review Price: £43.99

Available on Xbox One (reviewed), PS4 This should have been a new beginning. It’s the first PGA Tour on a new generation of consoles, and also the first with a new cover star, Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy. It’s a chance for EA to pull one of its oldest and best-loved franchises out of the doldrums it sunk into in the later Tiger Woods years, and to expand the horizons of one of gaming’s most conservative genres. Rory McIlroy PGA Tour could have been and should have been great.

Instead, it falls somewhere on the fringe of greatness, nearly on the green and within sight of the cup, but frustratingly short of target. It’s a alright-looking golf sim with finely-honed gameplay and a few smart surprises on the way, but it only feels like half the full package. PGA Tour does what it does very well, but the more you play, the more you notice what’s missing, and the more you wish it did just a little bit more.

Let’s talk about the stuff where Rory lands it on the fairway, not the scrub. The graphics have their weaknesses, including texture pop-up, some peculiar artefacts and the odd, weird shimmering effect, but this is still a reasonable leap forwards from the last Tiger Woods. The vegetation is lusher and more lifelike and the scenery more coherent and believable. Golfer animation is more fluid and convincing, with some great animations that take you through the whole gamut of emotions that the noble sport inspires, from joy and exhilaration through to frustration and raw misery.

Verdict Rory McIlroy PGA Tour plays a great game of golf and has noticeably better graphics than the series previous-gen outings. There’s not an awful lot wrong with the core game, and there are some nice surprises. The problem is that the lack of modes, courses, customisation options and players makes it feel only half-complete. This is a problem EA can fix with free DLC, but for now this feels like the foundation of a brilliant golf sim rather than the finished article.

Trusted Score

Stuart Andrews contributed gaming reviews to Trusted Reviews between 2005 and 2019. …

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Answering golf's biggest questions after Scottie Scheffler's Masters win

Scottie Scheffler tries to put into words what it means to win the 2024 Masters and wearing the iconic green jacket for the second time. (1:24)

• Senior college football writer
• Author of seven books on college football
• Graduate of the University of Georgia
• Paolo Uggetti

The 2024 Masters tournament is over and for the second time in three years Scottie Scheffler reigns supreme. With Scheffler now the owner of two green jackets, the rest of major season will feature the world's best players trying to take down the world No. 1.

From Scheffler's potential to Rory McIlroy's major quest to Tiger Woods' future plans, here are six lingering questions as the golf world shifts its focus from Augusta to the PGA Championship at Valhalla Country Club in May.

What's the ceiling for Scheffler?

Schlabach: I honestly don't think Scheffler has a ceiling right now. Over the past two years, he has matured tremendously as a golfer. He admitted Sunday that playing golf will become less of a priority after his wife, Meredith, gives birth to their first child later this month.

But Scheffler also said that he will always care deeply about winning golf tournaments -- almost wanting to win too much. I think capturing a second green jacket is confirmation that he's the best golfer in the world. He has won nine times since February 2022, but only one of them was at a major championship.

Now, he has won two green jackets. I don't think it's a question of whether Scheffler will win another major championship. It's a question of how many he's going to win and how long it's going to take him to pile them up.

Honestly, is it too early to talk about him winning a potential Grand Slam this season? His ball striking and short game are at a completely different level than the rest of the fields he's playing.

Scheffler has played 35 competitive rounds in PGA Tour events this season (the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was shortened to 54 holes because of weather) and still hasn't recorded a round over par. That's absurd.

"I try not to think about the past or the future too much," Scheffler said. "I love trying to live in the present. I've had a really good start to the year, and I hope that I can continue on this path that I'm on.

"I'm going to continue to put in the work that's got me here. I mean, yeah, that's pretty much it. I'm going to continue to put in the work, keep my head down. I like when I step up on the tee at a tournament, being able to tell myself that I did everything I could to play well and the rest isn't up to me."

Uggetti: Scheffler isn't just the best golfer in the world right now. He also seems to be the most self-aware and level-headed one, too. That's a dangerous combination. On Sunday, Scheffler showed he can win any tournament he plays in and that he has the perfect mindset to do it.

"I feel like playing professional golf is an endlessly not satisfying career," Scheffler said. "I wish I could soak this in a little bit more. Maybe I will tonight when I get home. But at the end of the day, I think that's what the human heart does. You always want more, and I think you have to fight those things and focus on what's good."

Don't get Scheffler wrong. He still wants to win. And he said as much, admitting how much he loves winning and hates losing. As if to prove his point, he's teeing it up at Hilton Head on Thursday and will undoubtedly be the favorite to win.

That's Scheffler's new reality, if it wasn't already before: He will be expected to win and questioned when he doesn't. But if anyone is prepared to shoulder those expectations, it's him. And if anyone has the game to keep winning, be it PGA Tour events or majors this year and beyond, it's him.

Is Rory ever going to complete the career Grand Slam?

Schlabach: I'm still a believer in Rory finally winning a green jacket and becoming only the sixth men's golfer to complete the career Grand Slam in the Masters era. I don't think his performance at Augusta National was a result of him buckling under pressure or wanting a green jacket too much. His current form just isn't great, and he knows it.

McIlroy carded a 1-under 71 in the first round and a 6-over 77 in the second. He didn't play well in the windy conditions, but he wasn't the only one who struggled. He has just one top-10 finish in seven tour events, so his results weren't great coming into Augusta National.

After Sunday's round, McIlroy said he was confident he can turn things around before he plays the final three majors. He's scheduled to play in this week's RBC Heritage and with Shane Lowry in the Zurich Classic of New Orleans team event April 25-28. It sounds like Rory is going to keep grinding to figure things out.

"Yeah, probably not the right time to be analytical at the moment, but I think as well if you're really going to make wholesale changes it's hard to play a lot of golf and make them at the same time," McIlroy said.

"I don't feel like I need to make wholesale changes. That's why I'm playing a lot. But if the time comes that I need to make wholesale changes with my golf swing and really try to reassess, it could be a six-month to a year process. ... I don't think I'm there yet, but there may come a time where I need to address that and really go back to the drawing board."

Uggetti: Everything about McIlroy's experience and talent indicates that he will win another major. Whether it can be at Augusta is a whole other question.

As the four-time major winner talked about this week, he has tried almost every different approach coming into the Masters -- arriving early, arriving late -- and though he has done everything from finish in the top-10 to miss the cut the past few years, he has yet to come close to winning.

"All I can do is come here and try my best," McIlroy said after his 1-under round Saturday. "That's what I do every time I show up. Some years it's better than others. I've just got to keep showing up and try to do the right thing."

Though McIlroy leaves Augusta with a tie for 22nd, there are several opportunities this year for him to add to his major total. He heads to Valhalla for the PGA Championship next, the site of his last major win in 2014. Familiarity hasn't done much for McIlroy at Augusta -- or elsewhere for that matter -- but his game is simply too good to not result in another major.

I'm curious to see how McIlroy approaches Augusta next year after another disappointing result. Will he play more? Will he play less? Will he see another swing coach? Or can he simply stay the course? This year, McIlroy was a firsthand witness to how Scheffler was able to conquer Augusta for the second time in three years.

McIlroy needs only one, but perhaps the key would be winning a major before Augusta. Of course, that's easier said than done, but if McIlroy can win at Valhalla or Pinehurst or Royal Troon, maybe some of the pressure surrounding this week can dissipate and allow him to freely chase after the coveted fourth major on his résumé.

Biggest winner(s) of the tournament?

Schlabach: Besides Scheffler, it has to be Sweden's Ludvig Åberg , who finished solo second at 7 under in his Masters debut. The former Texas Tech star was trying to become the first golfer to win the Masters in his debut since Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979.

Aberg would have been only the third player to win a major championship in his first start since the Masters was first played in 1934 -- Ben Curtis (2003 Open Championship) and Keegan Bradley (2011 PGA Championship) are the others.

Aberg, 24, won the Omega European Masters on the DP World Tour in September, competed for the winning European Ryder Cup team in Rome, and then captured his first PGA Tour victory at the RSM Classic in November.

According to Data Golf, Aberg led the Masters field in strokes gained: putting (3.19) and was third in strokes gained: off the tee (1.66). He has a complete game.

"I think he showed why at the Ryder Cup," McIlroy said. "I think every stage throughout his very, very young career, he's shown that he belongs. Gets the win in Europe, plays the Ryder Cup, gets the win in the States, playing in his first Masters, contending on the back nine on Sunday. He's sort of proven at every stage that he's played at that he belongs."

Uggetti: Let's talk about Max Homa . Though the final result might not have been what Homa and his social media devotees wanted, the week was undoubtedly a win for him. For the first time at Augusta, Homa was in true contention, and that counts for something. He played great golf and managed his way around a tough course by showing he belongs as a top-10 player in the world.

Homa has learned to use patience to his advantage, and though this result will require even more patience, Homa is equipped to handle it.

"I thought I handled myself great," Homa said Sunday. "Really didn't feel like I blinked."

There are certainly shots Homa would like to have back -- such as the tee ball on 12 that resulted in a double bogey -- but in the face of Scheffler's dominance, Homa was able to find solace in how he competed all week and what it meant for his chances at future majors.

"I just feel like I learned. I feel like I took a big leap," Homa said. "The rhetoric on me, and this is from myself, as well, is I have not performed in these things, and I performed for all four days. I didn't throw a 65 in there and sneak my way in. I had to sleep on this every single day, this feeling and kind of this monkey on my back. For me, I think it'll change some things, and then in other ways it'll change nothing at all."

Biggest loser(s) of the tournament?

Schlabach: I'm not sure if anyone has had back-to-back endings at the Masters as painful as Justin Thomas' the past two seasons.

In 2023, JT carded bogeys on three of the last four holes to miss the cut at the Masters by 1 stroke, which left him standing under an umbrella in the rain with his arms crossed in disbelief.

This year, Thomas was in great shape to make the cut and possibly make a move on the weekend. But then he went 7 over on the final four holes to miss the cut by 1 stroke. That's going to sting for a while.

Uggetti: Several golfers finished below Jon Rahm this week, but plenty of golfers finished above him, too, including Scheffler, who beat Rahm by 20 shots. As a defending Masters champion, it's never easy to be the one who has to put the green jacket on the winner knowing full well you did not retain it.

But for Rahm, the dilemma goes beyond Butler Cabin. He showed up to Augusta having played less golf in the lead-up than any other year because of his departure to LIV Golf. It was unclear how much his game would suffer, if at all, from playing in 54-hole events and not tournaments like the Genesis Invitational, where he had also won in 2023.

Rahm looked sluggish, never seeming to find the ideal form to compete, let alone contend. It's difficult to repeat as a Masters champion, but it's also not a great sign that Rahm will leave Augusta and have to wait a week before heading to Australia and Singapore to play against worse fields in order to get ready for the next major in mid May.

Favorites for majors?

Schlabach: The next major championship, the PGA Championship on May 16-19, is going to require a complete game. Based on what I saw at Augusta National, I wouldn't be surprised to see Aberg pick up his first major. But for now, it's hard to pass up Scheffler. I'm tempted to pick him for one or two more. I'm just not sure how being a father for the first time will affect him.

As far as the U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina on June 13-16, I'll go with Norway's Viktor Hovland , the reigning FedEx Cup champion. I know his game was a mess at the Masters, but his game sets up perfectly for Pinehurst No. 2. Hovland hits the ball long and accurately off the tee, and he's one of the best ball strikers in the world with an iron in his hand. There's plenty of time for him to get his form back in order before the U.S. Open.

Against perhaps better judgment, I'll pick McIlroy to win The Open at Royal Troon Golf Course in Scotland on July 18-21. McIlroy's major drought will be nearly 10 years long by then -- he last won at the 2014 PGA Championship at Valhalla -- and it has to end at some point.

He tied for fifth at Royal Troon in 2016 and for sixth at Royal Liverpool during Brian Harman 's breakthrough major win in July 2023. He tied for fifth at the 2016 Open at Royal Troon and had two top-six finishes in the past two Opens.

Uggetti: The PGA Championship at Valhalla will be very familiar for Rory McIlroy -- who won his last major there in 2014 -- but after watching Ludvig Aberg chart his way around Augusta National Golf Club this past week, it's difficult not to see him having a real shot at any of the year's remaining three majors.

The 24-year-old golfer from Sweden has already shown he can compete at the PGA Tour level and this week, during his first Masters, he did nothing to dissuade the notion that he will be a major winner one day. Aberg hung in with the No. 1 player in the world, Scottie Scheffler, and ...

Speaking of Scheffler, when it comes to the U.S. Open at Pinehurst, there's little to no need to look past Scheffler whose ballstriking should shine on the famous No. 2 course. With improved putting and an underrated short game, I could see Scheffler replicating the kind of performance Martin Kaymer had in 2014, when he went wire-to-wire at Pinehurst to win the U.S. Open by eight shots.

Of all of this year's majors, the Open Championship at Royal Troon seems like the toughest to predict this far ahead. Weather will likely be a factor, and after watching Brian Harman dominate the field at Royal Liverpool, it could really be anyone's game in July. McIlroy should once again fair well, but I like Tommy Fleetwood's chances, too. He keeps getting close and just finished top 10 at the Masters, too.

What's next for Tiger?

Uggetti: Even after looking like a shell of himself Saturday and Sunday and finishing 16-over for the tournament, Woods didn't hesitate in verbally committing to the rest of the year's majors after his final round concluded.

"I'm going to do my homework going forward at Pinehurst, Valhalla and Troon, but that's kind of the game plan," Woods said.

What will likely be more telling is if Tiger plays any other events at all. He had played only 24 competitive holes of golf coming into Augusta and in some instances, the rust really showed this weekend. On Saturday, he looked to be laboring, and though he returned Sunday and appeared to be doing much better, the question of how his body will continue to hold up remains.

Woods, however, remains undeterred from continuing to improve and compete no matter what.

"Keep lifting, keep the motor going, keep the body moving, keep getting stronger, keep progressing," Woods said of what's next. "Hopefully the practice sessions will keep getting longer."

It's clear that the more golf Woods plays, the more prepared he will be for the majors in which he's still trying to compete. But it's not that easy when his body is still a daily obstacle he'll have to overcome. At least this week, he was able to finish 72 holes.

Schlabach: While posting the worst round of his Masters career (10-over 82) and worst 72-hole total as a professional (16-over 304) had to be humbling for the 15-time major champion, the fact that he finished a 72-hole tournament was a step in the right direction.

Outside of Saturday's third round, when he lost his swing and struggled in windy conditions, he didn't look that bad. He drove the ball well off the tee and had a really good short game. His iron play and putting looked rusty, but that was to be expected after he played only 24 competitive holes before the Masters.

The fact that Tiger set a Masters record with his 24th consecutive cut is pretty remarkable.

What tour pros REALLY think of Rory McIlroy

Published: 16 February 2023 Last updated: 17 February 2023

What do other tour pros really think of Rory McIlroy?

Rory McIlroy’s friends, contemporaries and competitors reveal what they really think about him as a golfer and a man.

Justin thomas.

“My first memory of seeing Rory up close was four years ago at the Bear’s Club, near where we both live in the Jupiter, Florida area. I was just 19 and not even on the PGA Tour at that point. He was already a Major champion and a superstar. I was hitting balls next to him. There aren’t many players I stop to watch hit, but he was one of them. Just seeing him hit long irons and drivers is so impressive.”

Tiger Woods

“I told (son) Charlie, ‘Don’t copy my swing, copy Rory’s’. Have you ever seen Rory off balance on a shot? No. Not ever. You can swing as hard as you want, but you need to have balance.”

Shane Lowry

“Over the last few years, we’ve grown closer than we ever have been. I live 10 minutes from him, our wives are very good friends, we’ve got kids of similar ages. We do hang out a bit, we play practice rounds together. I play quite a bit with him at the club. It’s definitely helped me, over the years, playing golf with him – if you go out for a round on a Tuesday and you don’t shoot -8, you’re losing the money!”

Find out what more players, including Will Zalatoris, Darren Clark, Jon Rahm and Thomas Bjorn think of Rory on the Today’s Golfer Members’ website .

Can Rory McIlroy finally win the Masters to complete his elusive career grand slam?

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Rory McIlroy is a green jacket away from a career grand slam, something only five players have done in the history of golf. But each year, the Masters has eluded him. He has seven top-10 finishes in the tournament, including second in 2022, yet each year has been denied.

Maybe he’s trying too hard.

“This golf course gets you to chase things a little more than other golf courses if you make a bogey or get yourself out of position,” said McIlroy, 34, among the favorites in the 2024 Masters, which begins Thursday. “Because it always tempts you to do something you think you can do.”

It’s important to remember, he said this week, that the Masters is a 72-hole golf tournament and you cannot win it from the first tee shot.

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“I’m pretty confident in my golf game,” McIlroy said. “I think I can do most things, but sometimes you just have to take the conservative route and be a little more disciplined and patient.”

McIlroy is second in the World Golf Rankings behind Scottie Scheffler, although that metric is skewed because it doesn’t factor in LIV Golf events — and that competing tour has a significant footprint on this year’s Masters.

This year’s 13-member LIV contingent includes defending Masters champion Jon Rahm ; Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson , who tied for second; and Patrick Reed, who finished fourth.

Rahm is looking to become the fourth player to win back-to-back Masters, joining Jack Nicklaus, who repeated in 1966, Nick Faldo (1990) and Tiger Woods (2002).

Rahm has played in five LIV events this year and has yet to win. But neither Nicklaus nor Faldo had won anywhere coming into the Masters the years they repeated, and Woods had won once. So coming to Augusta on a hot or cold streak is not an especially reliable predictor of how someone is going to do.

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April 9, 2023

“I feel physically better than I did last year,” Rahm said. “But then once the competition starts, it doesn’t really matter. Once the gun goes off, whatever you feel is out the window; you’ve got to go out there and post a score.

“So it wouldn’t be the first time. It wouldn’t be the first time we hear somebody not feeling their best and winning.”

This also marks the fifth anniversary of Woods’ historic victory in 2019, when he overcame all odds to win his fifth Masters title.

Woods, 48, has a chance to set another Masters record by making the cut for a 24th consecutive time. But winning a sixth green jacket is almost inconceivable, especially considering he has played in only three full-field events since 2023, and finished just one: last year’s Genesis Invitational at Riviera. He withdrew from the Masters last year seven holes into the third round after aggravating a foot injury.

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Then again, people have counted him out before.

Can Woods win?

“I still think I can,” he said.

Everyone figures to be battling the weather. At midday Wednesday, the forecast for Thursday was brutal, calling for thunderstorms in the early morning followed by a stronger band of heavy rain and thunderstorms from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The wind is expected to be whipping, with gusts of 40-45 mph, giving way to scattered showers in the afternoon and evening. The windy conditions could continue until Friday morning with eventual sunny skies Friday afternoon and through the weekend.

NBC analyst Brandel Chamblee said the player who will have the most pressure piled on his shoulders this week is McIlroy.

“You go back and look and there’s a pattern,” Chamblee said. “Every time, he seems to play his worst golf when it means the most — in other words, in the first round when he’s got to get off to a good start.”

Chamblee noted that in his last five Masters, McIlroy has an average score of 73.8 in the opening round.

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Nov. 11, 2020

“That speaks to not being in the right place mentally,” Chamblee said.

Woods said he’s confident McIlroy will eventually join him as the sixth career grand slam winner. Along with Woods, the others to win all four major championships were Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player.

“No question he’ll do it at some point,” Woods said of McIlroy. “Rory’s too talented, too good. He’s going to be playing this event for a very long time. He’ll get it done. It’s just a matter of when.”

McIlroy was happy to hear that, but acknowledged there’s a difference between words and deeds.

“Yeah, it’s flattering,” he said. “It’s nice to hear, in my opinion, the best player ever to play the game say something like that. So, yeah, I mean, does that mean that it’s going to happen? Obviously not. But he’s been around the game long enough to know that I at least have the potential to do it. I know I’ve got the potential to do it too. It’s not as if I haven’t been a pretty good player for the last couple of decades.”

Finally, he conceded: “It’s nice to hear it when it comes out of his mouth.”

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Rory McIlroy PGA Tour Review

Swing and a miss.

By Josiah Renaudin on July 24, 2015 at 11:06AM PDT

Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is a shallow, lifeless golf game--rich in technical failings but bankrupt of interesting content. The game types are limited, the number of players and courses is laughably small, and the textures awkwardly pop in and out of view as the camera scrolls across a course. Actually swinging a club and mapping out shots feels right, but whatever goodwill is earned on the course evaporates as you pull away to discover the unimpressive Pro Career mode and the restrictive nature of even the basic Play Now feature. The fresh face on the cover and fancy new game engine can't mask the fact that Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is an undercooked debut that feels like half of a game.

It starts strong, at least, with a detailed tutorial on the various swing styles that provide you with more freedom than ever before. There are three set swing types: a basic analog stick setup where power is determined by the backswing, a more complex version where the follow-through is also taken into account, and the classic three-button press system. If none of the above suits your style, a custom swing option allows you to combine elements of each approach into a personalized pairing of preferences. You can determine if you'd like to be able to hit power shots, zoom in on the trajectory of your ball, see how the wind shapes its flight, and even closely control its spin. Whether you'd like to play Rory McIlroy PGA Tour as a sports simulation or an over-the-top arcade game, the options are there.

No matter what style you choose, taking a smooth backswing and making solid contact with the ball feels authentic, and the putting is challenging without feeling punishing. A dashed line represents the path of your ball from its place on the green to the hole, which takes into account the putt's speed and break. It takes time to correctly read greens with steep hills or sharp ridges, but watching a 20-foot putt bend from right to left and clink at the bottom of the cup is very satisfying.

Other than the lack of load screens between holes and an improved putting system, the swing selection is the only area where Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is bigger and better than what's come before it. The number of real-life courses has been more than halved, with only eight locations that golfers will actually recognize. There are four additional make-believe locations, but none of them make up for the fact that you can't experience the Masters at one of the most famous courses of all time, Augusta National. If that’s not disappointing enough, there are just 12 playable golfers--about a quarter of what previous games have trained us to expect.

Fewer golfers wouldn't be all that damning if the character creator was even passable, but what's available is one of the worst customization tools ever stuffed into a sports game. There are so few options when creating your custom golfer that it's nearly impossible to make a character that you can even pretend looks like you, unless yours happens to match one of the 11 pre-set heads or three body types provided. Instead of feeling like you're starting your own unique career on the PGA Tour, the barebones tools force you to role-play as some anonymous young golfer straight out of a stock photo.

You take this indistinct, cookie-cutter avatar through a single lower-level Web.com event, and from there, you're off to the races. There's no grand buildup, no scenes of your collegiate career, and no narrative to push you forward. You go from tournament to tournament, either competing in quick rounds where you play five or six of the most important holes per day or going through all 72 holes with the hope of becoming the world's number one golfer. But without any sort of subsidiary content to complement the tournaments--such as a story, drills, or even a schedule to outline your goals--the Pro Career can quickly devolve into an unexciting slog devoid of drama.

The only saving grace is the fact that your character raises levels, earns new clubs, and unlocks additional outfits just about every time you complete a round of 18. This sense of progression makes the gauntlet of tournaments much more palatable, as you're able to see your power, accuracy, and spin vastly improve and lead to pretty shots and even prettier scorecards worth hanging on the fridge. You don't manually add points to specific aspects of your game, but you can choose from different packages that might focus on power, accuracy, or more balanced play.

Rory McIlroy PGA Tour fails to pair its solid mechanics with diverse and interesting content, and its myriad technical failings drag the otherwise picturesque courses into the dirt.

Unfortunately, the bleak only gets bleaker as you venture outside of the career, where the online community-based Country Club and popular modes like Skins, Best Ball, and Battle Golf have all been removed. Online tournaments and head-to-head play give you some reason to test your created golfer against players more savvy than the AI, but the utter lack of gameplay variety is disappointing.

If you find yourself hungry for something--anything--new to grab on to, a fresh Night Club Challenge mode is available. This extended series of challenges has you landing balls in small circles and through floating hoops to earn points, but a mid-air nitrous boost just isn't enough to make target practice drills any fun. You can earn three stars per level--similar to most popular mobile games--but the deeper you travel down the road of challenges, the less it feels like golf.

Even outside this neon-lit, objective-based playground lie moments that, again, don't feel like anything you'd find on the real PGA Tour. Sinking birdie putts as your created player often leads to a shot of him or her awkwardly busting out the robot or the sprinkler--and while I don't think golf needs to be some sacred pursuit devoid of humor, the celebrations feel completely out of place.

Additionally, the commentary sporadically mismatches its messages with what's actually taking place on-screen. Even though I sliced my ball out of bounds and into the trees at St. Andrews, both commentators talked about how unfortunate it was that I just hit it into the water--despite my ball being completely dry. After that, they mentioned how my approach shot had too much speed and not enough backspin as they watched it softly land on the back of the green and spin backward toward the front hole location. Like most other aspects of the game, the commentary is careless.

Rory McIlroy PGA Tour fails to pair its solid mechanics with diverse and interesting content, and its myriad technical failings drag the otherwise picturesque courses into the dirt. There are just too few courses and golfers to keep you playing, and even the limited game modes available don't have anywhere near the complexity or depth we've come to expect. Whether you want to call it a shank, a duff, or a whiff, all that really matters is that Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is a poor effort from a series that was looking to make a splash in its generational debut.

• Leave Blank
• Different swing styles give players more control on the course
• Putting is both challenging and rewarding
• Disappointingly small roster and course selection
• Dull career mode weighed down by paltry character creation tool
• Textures pop in and out of focus constantly
• Most of the interesting modes you’ve come to expect are absent

About the Author

Josiah Renaudin

• @JosiahRenaudin

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The Masters 2024: Rory McIlroy struggling with his game as Grand Slam bid falls short at Augusta National

Rory McIlroy is without a major win since the 2014 PGA Championship; Former world No 1 still needs to win The Masters to complete the career Grand Slam; McIlroy struggled to a tied-22nd finish in another frustrating major week at Augusta National

By Ali Stafford at Augusta National

Monday 15 April 2024 06:11, UK

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Rory McIlroy admitted there is "lots of room for improvement" in his game heading into the rest of the year after another failed career Grand Slam bid at The Masters.

McIlroy had carded his lowest opening round at The Masters since 2018 when he posted a one-under 71 on Thursday, although failed to register a single birdie in a second-round 77 that dropped him down the leaderboard.

The four-time major champion said he would 'give it a go' after a third-round 71 left him needing to overturn a 10-stroke deficit on the final day, where another frustrating 73 saw him end the week on four over and take his wait to complete the career Grand Slam into an 11th year.

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"I don't really know what to say," McIlroy admitted post-round. "Just sort of felt like my game was OK and managed it pretty well, but obviously Friday was a really tough day, and losing five shots sort of put me in a pretty difficult position going into the weekend.

"Then the conditions were pretty tough. The greens are crusty and firm and hard to get the ball super close and hard to make a ton of birdies.

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"Once you get seven or eight back going into the weekend here, it's hard to make up that ground," McIlroy added. "I guess it's more the same of what I've shown this year.

"It's not as if it's been a down week in comparison to the way I've been playing. It's just a matter of me trying to get my game in a bit better shape going towards the rest of the season."

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Any hopes of a final-day charge from McIlroy immediately ended when he missed the opening green with a wedge and failed to get up and down to save par, then three-putted for par at the par-five second after firing his second to within 20 feet.

McIlroy ended a par streak by two-putting for birdie at the par-five eighth and holing from 20 feet at the ninth, seeing him reach the turn in red figures for the day, only for him to fail to get up and down from the sand to save par at the 10th.

He safely made the par on the first two holes of Amen Corner but became unstuck at the par-five 13th, carding a four-putt bogey from distance after reaching the green in two, although responded by getting up and down to birdie the par-five 15th for the first time of the week.

McIlroy's wayward approach into the 17th resulted in another dropped shot, sending him back to over par for the round, while closing par rounding off the latest disappointing bid to complete the career Grand Slam.

"I need to take a little bit of time and reflect on this week and what I did well, what I didn't do so well, and sort of try to make a plan for the next few months, especially from here going through obviously to the end of July. Hopefully get myself in a bit better form for those last three.

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"They're not terrible weeks by any stretch, but there's a lot of room for improvement. I'm close in some ways, but then I feel quite far away in others. Once I get one thing, sort of put that to bed, then another thing pops up, and it's just one of those at the minute."

Time for change for McIlroy?

McIlroy made a trip to Las Vegas last month for a four-hour lesson with Butch Harmon, something he has done multiple times during his career, with the Northern Irishman insisting that he hasn't yet reached the point where he needs to make significant changes in his game.

"If you're really going to make wholesale changes it's hard to play a lot of golf and make them at the same time," McIlroy added. "I don't feel like I need to make wholesale changes - that's why I'm playing a lot.

"If the time comes that I need to make wholesale changes with my golf swing and really try to reassess, it could be a six-month to a year process. Not saying I wouldn't play any tournaments in that time, but the focus would be on the sort of technical side of things and really not result-driven.

"I don't think I'm there yet, but there may come a time when I need to address that and really go back to the drawing board."

Where will McIlroy feature next?

McIlroy heads to South Carolina next for the RBC Heritage, beginning Thursday and the latest of the PGA Tour's Signature Events, with the Northern Irishman then teaming up with Shane Lowry to make his debut at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans the following week.

That team event will be McIlroy's fourth start in as many weeks, having also played four times in a five-week stretch earlier in his PGA Tour campaign, with the Northern Irishman then scheduled to take his birthday week off ahead of returning at the Wells Fargo Championship (May 9-12).

McIlroy will be hoping for a record fourth career title at Quail Hollow, before having another opportunity to end his major drought when the PGA Championship takes place at Valhalla the following week.

The 34-year-old has committed to the RBC Canadian Open from May 30-June 2, an event he has won twice, with McIlroy also scheduled to play the Memorial Tournament (June 6-9) before heading to the US Open at Pinehurst from June 16-19.

Watch Rory McIlroy in action throughout the PGA Tour season live on Sky Sports. McIlroy features next at the RBC Heritage, with Featured Group coverage live on Thursday from 12.15pm ahead of full coverage from 7pm on Sky Sports Golf.

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2024 Masters odds, picks, field, top predictions: Golf insider fading Rory McIlroy at Augusta National

Sia nejad reveals his masters 2024 picks, props and sleepers with an elite field set to tee off at augusta national golf club on thursday, april 11.

The first round of the 2024 Masters Tournament will begin at 10:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, two-and-a-half hours later than planned due to storms. Brooks Koepka and Brian Harman are paired together for the first two rounds of the 2024 Masters at Augusta National Golf Club. Koepka was vocal about playing behind a "brutally slow" pairing in the final round of the Masters last year and Koepka struggled, shooting a 3-over-par to finish second after entering the day with a two-stroke lead. Harman is known as one of the slower-paced players on the PGA Tour, so should this pairing affect your strategy when making 2024 Masters picks?

Koepka has the third-shortest 2024 Masters odds to win at 11-1, but if he becomes frustrated by slow play in his own pairing, it could derail his week. Could Koepka's potential annoyance be enough to keep him out of your 2024 Masters predictions? Scottie Scheffler is the 13-4 favorite in the latest Masters odds 2024 after his dominant March. Before locking in any 2024 Masters picks, make sure you see the PGA Tour predictions and best bets from golf betting and fantasy expert Sia Nejad .

Nejad specializes in betting and DFS in golf, among other sports. He's had incredible success in the outright and first-round leader markets as well as betting head-to-head matchups. He's been profitable with his head-to-head matchups since last year's Charles Schwab Challenge, going 35-21-2 and returning 10.00 units. That's a $1,000 profit for $100 bettors since May 2023.

Nejad also nailed 75-1 longshot Wyndham Clark as the outright winner at the Wells Fargo Championship. In 2023, SportsLine debuted "The Early Wedge," and in the first three months of the show, he hit two first-round leaders and three outright winners.

Now, Nejad has focused his attention on the 2024 Masters field and has locked in his best bets, top sleepers and favorites to avoid. See who they are at SportsLine .

Top 2024 Masters expert picks

One surprise: Nejad is completely fading Rory McIlroy, even though he's a four-time major champion and one of the top favorites in the 2024 Masters odds. McIlroy joined Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods as the only three golfers to win four majors by the age of 25, but he has gone winless at majors since the 2014 PGA Championship. The Masters is the only major that McIlroy has not won, so the pressure on him is even greater at Augusta National.

He has missed the cut in two of his last three attempts to complete the career grand slam after stringing together seven consecutive top-21 finishes at the Masters. The 34-year-old is off to a slow start this season, posting just one top-15 finish in his first six tournaments. He leads the PGA Tour in total driving, but he ranks outside the top 70 in strokes gained from putting and he has not shown enough recent form this season or at Augusta National to justify his current odds to win the event.

Instead, Nejad is high on the chances of Hideki Matsuyama, even though he's a +2000 longshot. The 32-year-old Japanese star has already piled up nine PGA Tour wins and 18 wins around the world professionally. That includes a one-shot victory at the 2021 Masters over Will Zalatoris in which he used a brilliant 65 on Saturday to open up a four-shot lead before closing it out on Sunday.

Matsuyama is No. 12 in the Official World Golf Ranking and been top 12 in his last four PGA Tour starts, including a seventh-place finish last week in Texas, a sixth at the Players Championship and a win at the Genesis Invitational. Matsuyama shot a final-round 62 to win at Riviera, and it's that go-low potential that has Nejad believing that he'll be a factor yet again at Augusta, where he's been top-20 in eight of his last nine appearances.  See who else to back at SportsLine .

How to make 2024 Masters picks

Nejad has locked in his early best bets for the 2024 Masters and is backing several longshots, including one priced at more than 150-1. This player "has been playing well in 2024 and has a decent track record at the Masters."  You can see Nejad's PGA Tour picks only at SportsLine .

So, which players should you target or avoid for the 2024 Masters, and which player in the Masters 2024 field could bring a huge payday at more than 150-1? Check out the odds below, then visit SportsLine to see Sia Nejad's top picks for the 2024 Masters, all from the expert who is 35-21 on golf head-to-head picks .

2024 Masters odds, field

See Nejad's picks, best bets and predictions here

Scottie Scheffler +325 Rory McIlroy +1000 Brooks Koepka +1100 Jon Rahm +1200 Wyndham Clark +1500 Xander Schauffele +1800 Will Zalatoris +2000 Hideki Matsuyama +2000 Jordan Spieth +2000 Viktor Hovland +2200 Ludvig Aberg +2500 Joaquin Niemann +2500 Cameron Smith +2800 Justin Thomas +2800 Patrick Cantlay +2800 Collin Morikawa +3000 Dustin Johnson +3300 Tony Finau +3500 Bryson DeChambeau +3500 Brian Harman +3500 Shane Lowry +4000 Max Homa +4000 Cameron Young +4000 Jason Day +4000 Matt Fitzpatrick +4000 Min Woo Lee +5000 Sam Burns +5000 Sahith Theegala +5000 Tommy Fleetwood +5500 Sergio Garcio +6000 Tyrrell Hatton +6000 Byeong-hun An +6500 Chris Kirk +7000 Tom Kim +7000 Russell Henley +7000 Patrick Reed +7000 Rickie Fowler +7500 Akshay Bhatia +7500 Corey Conners +7500 Sungjae Im +7500 Si Woo Kim +8000 Denny McCarthy +9000 Adam Scott +9000 Justin Rose +9000 Phil Mickelson +10000 Tiger Woods +10000 Stephen Jaeger +12500 Sepp Straka +12500 Nick Taylor +12500 Erik Van Rooyen +15000 Eric Cole +15000 Adrian Meronk +15000 Jake Knapp +15000 Keegan Bradley +15000 Matthieu Pavon +15000 Nicolai Hojgaard +15000 J.T. Poston +15000 Emiliano Grillo +15000 Harris English +15000 Thorbjörn Olesen +17500 Lucas Glover +17500 Luke List +17500 Adam Hadwin +17500 Taylor Moore +20000 Ryan Fox +20000 Kurt Kitayama +20000 Bubba Watson +20000 Nick Dunlap +20000 Peter Malnati +20000 Cam Davis +20000 Austin Eckroat +22500 Ryo Hisatsune +25000 Lee Hodges +27500 Adan Schenk +30000 Danny Willett +35000 Charl Schwartzel +35000 Gary Woodland +50000 Grayson Murray +50000 Camilo Villegas +50000 Zach Johnson +75000 Christo Lamprecht +75000 Fred Couples +100000 Mike Weir +100000 Neal Shipley +150000 Vijay Singh +150000 Stewart Hagestad +150000 Jasper Stubbs +200000 Jose Maria Olazabal +200000 Santiago de la Fuente +250000

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Expert Picks: Masters Tournament

Expert Picks

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How it works: Each week, our experts from PGATOUR.COM will make their selections in PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf. Each lineup consists of four starters and two bench players that can be rotated after each round. Adding to the challenge is that every golfer can be used only three times per each of four Segments.

Aside from the experts below, Golfbet Insider Rob Bolton breaks down the field at the Masters Tournament in this week's edition of Power Rankings .

Betting picks

WILL GRAY (Lead, Fantasy & Betting)

• Winner: Scottie Scheffler (+400) – It’s not sexy, but I’ve spent too much time trying to rationalize a pick on someone else. At the end of the day, Scheffler was red-hot heading into his 2022 Masters triumph – and he’s playing materially better this time around.
• Top 10: Ludvig Åberg (+225) – We all know the trends against first-time winners, but they don’t apply to the finish markets. Åberg led the Valero field in SG: Tee-to-Green last week and has all the skills required to contend in his major championship debut.
• Longshot: Russell Henley (+6000) – The former Georgia Bulldog finished T4 here a year ago and has been known to heat up on the greens from time to time. Two top-5s in his last three starts show signs of promise.
• H2H: Chris Kirk (-120) over Keegan Bradley – There aren’t a ton of course comps for Augusta National, but there are some undeniable parallels with the terrain of Kapalua. Expect the Sentry champ to play well, having finished T23 here last year, while Bradley has missed three of four cuts entering the week.

BEN EVERILL (Senior writer, Fantasy & Betting)

• Winner: Xander Schauffele (+1600) – Look, we all know Scheffler has the chance to take this tournament and run with it but my process of elimination story brought me a winner last year and I’m banking it can do it again. Schauffele is ready to contend again… and you have to be knocking on the door to eventually be let in. Back off my blacklist and into the furnace!
• Top 10: Sahith Theegala (+320) – I really like Theegala as an outright option here over the next few years. T9 a year ago with a hot finish and another year wiser to his game. He still has more foul balls off the tee than I’d like but if he can get away with those this week he’s a chance.
• Longshot: Jason Day +6600 – Longshots don’t win the Masters and my campaign to move the threshold to +4000 this week fell on deaf ears (Zalatoris, Finau, Smith…). But how can I not plump for the man who – in his prime – had me declaring he’d win two green jackets in his lifetime? Multiple chances in the past… why not another.
• Head to Head: Shane Lowry (-110) over Collin Morikawa – Lowry’s Tee-to-Green game has been good of late whereas Morikawa is in a ball-striking slump compared to his usual high standards. This is as much a Morikawa fade as anything else.

CHRIS BREECE (Senior Content Manager Golfbet)

• Winner: Scottie Scheffler (+400) – I’ll be that guy. My three finalists were him, Spieth and Schauffele. It came down to who I trusted most to win. And it’s not even close.
• Top 10: Matt Fitzpatrick (+275) – I’m staying patient and not backing off my support of him. He had the best weekend of anyone in San Antonio and I still feel like he has great golf ahead of him.
• Longshot: Max Homa (+5500) – I know what you’re thinking. However, name me a player with more talent/star power whose odds are above +5000.
• H2H: Shane Lowry (-110) over Collin Morikawa – I almost picked Lowry for the top 10. Generally plays well here and has been in good form.

MATT DELVECCHIO (Social content manager, Fantasy & Betting)

• Winner: Will Zalatoris (+4000) – Beware the hungry dog runs faster. It’s comeback time for the previous major runner-up. He’s come back to good form from his back surgery with a three-game stretch of T13, T2 and T4 earlier in the year. He played with Tiger on Monday and saw how great he looked recovering from his own surgery. Will even talked about the influence Tiger's comeback has had on his own journey. People are sleeping on Zalatoris' comeback because of his MC at THE PLAYERS and T74 in Houston. Augusta will bring something out of him. Zalatoris is ready to be among the top players in the world and will show it this week.
• Top 10: Bryson DeChambeau (+300) – It’s been four years since he called Augusta National a par 67. He is older and wiser now to say such a thing. DeChambeau's game fits Augusta well and I see him taking a big charge at this championship in a quest to become a two-time major champion.
• Longshot: Sam Burns (+5500) – The only reason I’m taking him here is that I’ve liked him to win for the past couple of months now and he hasn’t. A wise man once said, “if you like a player to win soon, more likely than not they will”.
• H2H: Lowry (-110) over Morikawa – Collin’s game is a mystery this year. Most alarming has been his iron play which in past years has been seen as unstoppable. Combo that with the fact that Lowry does like Augusta and is in relatively good form as of late. I’ll take the current form over past success.

Odds were sourced on Tuesday, April 9. For live odds, visit BetMGM .

Want to see how to set up your PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf lineup? Scroll below.

THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN OUR EXPERTS? The PGA TOUR Experts league is once again open to the public. You can play our free fantasy game and see how you measure up against our experts below.

Joining the league is simple. Just click here to sign up or log in. Once you create a team, click the "LEAGUES" tab. Then click on "FEATURED," and then on the PGA TOUR Experts league that populates.

*Brett Jungles joined the Expert Picks league at the beginning of Segment 1 and did not accumulate any points from the FedExCup Fall.

Golfbet experts longshot: 0-14

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