Along with Scottie Scheffler, McIlroy has long been one of the tour’s biggest draws. The Northern Irishman has 29 PGA Tour victories to his name, including five majors.
His 2025 season brought a lot of highlights – wins at The Masters, The Players Championship and the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. But there were challenges too.
He kept away from PGA Tour press conferences for about a month between May and June. Still, 2025 will be remembered as a huge year in McIlroy’s career overall.
McIlroy’s outlook seems to have shifted quite a bit since then, though he hasn’t officially said anything about stepping away from golf. He spoke earlier this year about wanting more time at home and less time travelling. At 36, those thoughts are becoming more common for him.
PGA Tour encouraged to adapt amid new Rory McIlroy challenge
McIlroy has reached a point in his career where he’s more interested in exploring new opportunities than sticking to the same tournament schedule year after year.
That shift in mindset might force the PGA Tour to rethink its approach. Speaking to the Golf Channel, Ryan Lavner discussed where things stand with the current PGA Tour calendar.
“If your biggest star, and look, Rory is not Scottie, Scottie has made it abundantly clear that he prefers what is happening right now on the PGA Tour, against the very best fields, located almost exclusively in the United States, having started a young family.
“Rory, at a different stage of his career and his life I guess, finds it more appealing to go to places where he has not previously been.
“He compares it to what Roger Federer told him years ago. When Roger was in his late career stages, he really got a lot of enjoyment, or a lot of personal satisfaction of going and playing in Cincinnati or going and playing in Turkey where he had not played previously. That at that point of his career was something new something exciting something that could get his competitive juices flowing.
Is he going to find personal satisfaction teeing it up at Truist Championship? Probably not. Is he going to find personal satisfaction teeing it up at RBC Heritage? Probably not.”
Rory McIlroy’s comments on the 2026 PGA Tour calendar
McIlroy spoke about the upcoming 2026 PGA Tour calendar back in August, sharing his view that building momentum early in the year is a positive step for the sport.
The five-time major winner said: “I mean, geez, I think it’s all positive when you have — golf builds through the January, February, March months, and obviously golf gets a huge popularity spike or whatever through Augusta; and then to try to keep that momentum going, keep that momentum going through the next few weeks, through the PGA, U.S. Open, I think it’s a good thing.
“It’s quite a bit of a workload for the players to play that much golf in that stretch, but I think it’s not as if we’re having to travel halfway around the world to do it. These are all pretty easy stops on the East Coast for the most part.
“But I think it’ll be good. It’ll be a good schedule, and I think if the TOUR and the top players get off to a good start, I think that builds momentum for the TOUR, and I think the TOUR can just sort of ride that momentum through that stretch.”
But he also made it clear he’ll continue to choose tournaments based on what suits him best.
The Northern Irishman explained: “I’ll always look at the schedule at the start of year and see what best fits me and my life and everything else that I do with family or other opportunities that I’m pursuing outside of golf.”
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“This year meant skipping a few signature events. [Next year] may skip less or skip more. That might be my prerogative.”
“The luxury of being a PGA Tour player is we’re free to pick our own schedules for most parts,” he continued.
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