
Rory McIlroy switches focus to being at top form for Ryder Cup
Finishing a distant seventh to Open champion and world number one Scottie Scheffler was not how the Northern Irishman wanted to end his major season, especially on home soil at Royal Portrush.
But having shown he is over the blip he encountered after his Masters win, which completed the career Grand Slam in April, the 36-year-old is keen to save his best for Bethpage in New York this September.
He still has the FedEx Cup play-offs to come in August but his real motivation comes the following month and that is why he will not be playing much as he looks to retain his sharpness.
'I feel like being back in Europe for a bit was a nice reset,' said McIlroy.
'I feel like I'm getting back to where I want to be and we've still got a lot of golf left this year with obviously Ryder Cup being the big one in there in September.
'I don't want to play too much leading up to that because I want to be fresh so I'm looking forward to a few weeks off here.
'I'll reflect on what's been already a good year and start to get myself ready for that run up to the Ryder Cup.'
That good year began with victory at the Pebble Beach Pro-am in February and the Players Championship in March before the big one at Augusta the following month.
He has not won since, while Scheffler has four victories – including two majors in The Open and US PGA – and has the momentum.
McIlroy thinks the sharpness he had at the start of the year has returned but insists his rival's success is not a motivating factor, adding: 'Yeah, I do feel good – but I also had the three wins when Scottie wasn't quite on his game.
'All I can do is focus on myself and try to play the best golf that I can. I know that, when I do that, I'll have my weeks where I'll contend and hopefully win.
'I've gotten everything I wanted out of this week apart from a Claret Jug and that's just because one person was just a little bit better than the rest of us.'
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Daily Mirror
9 minutes ago
- Daily Mirror
Lando Norris praises Scottie Scheffler after The Open winner's 'unfulfilled' comment
The Open Championship winner Scottie Scheffler caused a stir at Royal Portrush by claiming he is 'unfulfilled' by his extraordinary level of success at the top of the golf world Formula 1 title contender Lando Norris has spoken out in support of Scottie Scheffler after the golf superstar's eye-catching comments made at last weekend's The Open Championship. The American lifted the Claret Jug for the first time with a comfortable victory at Royal Portrush, winning by four strokes over nearest challenger Harris English. It was Scheffler's fourth Major win and 22nd professional tournament success, having dominated golf since his breakout year in 2022. He has now spent 150 consecutive weeks as the number one ranked golfer on the planet and is almost 300 points ahead of second-placed Rory McIlroy in the Official World Golf Ranking. Aged 29, Scheffler is already fourth on the list of all-time top earners from the PGA Tour, having won £67,725,863 in prize money alone during his relatively short career to date, and his trajectory has been compared to that of megastar Tiger Woods. Still, he made it clear when speaking to reporters at The Open that he feels there is something missing. Scheffler caught the eye by saying: "Look at this week, for example. What's the best-case scenario? I win this golf tournament, and then I'm going to show up in Memphis, and it's like, 'Okay, listen, you won two Majors this year, what are you going to do this week?' Sign up to our free weekly F1 newsletter, Pit Lane Chronicle, by entering your email address below so that every new edition lands straight in your inbox! "If I come in second this week or if I finish dead last, no matter what happens, we're always on to the next week. The show goes on. Sometimes the feeling of winning only lasts a few seconds. You work your whole life to celebrate winning a tournament for a few minutes. It only lasts a few minutes, that kind of euphoric feeling. "To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I'm not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I'm not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world because what's the point? This is not a fulfilling life. It's fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it's not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart." While those comments drew surprised reactions from many, they resonated with Norris. The McLaren racer is also a keen golfer in his spare time and, like Scheffler, has been open about his mental health ever since he first burst onto the scene in F1 back in 2019. "I quite liked what Scottie said," said the Brit, reflecting on his own short-lived high after winning his home race, the British Grand Prix, for the first time two weeks ago. "I respect that he's quite honest about his whole feelings about everything. It's just honest about what he wants. Not everyone has to say what everyone believes in and what everyone thinks should be correct or not correct. "I'm happy that someone that high up, achieving what he's done, he's performing to the same level that Tiger did in many circumstances. And that's pretty amazing to see him come out and say something like that. So I respect that a lot. And I related to a lot of it in many ways, which is cool. "It's not a bad attitude, it's just his own way of achieving what he achieved. And I think you have to respect something like that. I found it, I admired that kind of thing. I love golf... I still support Rory more than anyone, the Brits. I thought it was fascinating and cool to see someone performing at such an incredibly high level come out and just say what he did."


Times
25 minutes ago
- Times
Jonas Vingegaard has lost belief he can beat Tadej Pogacar
Hindsight allows us to see with greater clarity. As a contest, the Tour de France ended on the day it was meant to begin. That was the first truly mountainous race to Hautacam, the 12th of 21 stages. It was the moment Tadej Pogacar chose to remind his adversaries they were wasting their time. He will clinch his fourth Tour de France on the Champs-Élysées at tea-time on Sunday but the outcome was known for ten days. Pogacar is the greatest rider of this generation and there are good reasons for considering him the best of all time. When he races, things happen. He has, after all, won 21 stages of the Tour de France and yet the victory at Hautacam ten days ago was still exceptional. For months this was the stage he had targeted, believing it would give him the Yellow Jersey and with the help of his team, they would keep it. Unexpected things happen in the Tour and the day before Hautacam Pogacar crashed close to the finish in Toulouse. It was a high-speed fall where for a frightening second, it seemed his head was about to collide with a 9in roadside kerb. Luckily he instinctively got his head up and just missed the kerb. Still it was a heavy fall and he felt beaten up. Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager. That was purely physical. 'Tadej is mentally very strong,' UAE doctor Adrian Rotunno said at the Base Camp Lodge Hotel in Albertville on Friday night. 'We were worried about the impact of that fall. He wasn't.' Hautacam is a 13.5-kilometre climb at an average gradient of 7.8 per cent. This puts it up there with the toughest ascents. They had barely hit Hautacam when Pogacar got team-mates Tim Wellens and Jhonatan Narváez to increase the tempo. They knew the plan because both — Narváez especially — went so fast it seemed they had lost their minds. Only Pogacar and his forever rival, Jonas Vingegaard, could follow Narváez's infernal pace. Of course he could not keep it up for long and when he pulled to one side, Pogacar went even faster. Vingegaard tried to stay with him and for a kilometre or so, he stayed at ten and 12 seconds back. Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager. The problem for any rider chasing Pogacar is that if the Slovenian wants to gain time, he does not let up. Takes a short breather and he goes again. He extends his lead, another breather and goes again. No relenting until he has crossed the line and there is no more time to be taken. At Hautacam he arrived 2min 10sec before Vingegaard, the first time in their five-year rivalry that he had taken more than two minutes on the Dane in a stage of the Tour. That gave him an overall lead of 3:31. He tagged on another 36 seconds in the next day's mountain time trial and then, truly, the race was over. This is not a bike rider who loses a lead of four minutes in the Tour. Something else died on Hautacam; namely, the intense rivalry between Pogacar and Vingegaard. Again with the benefit of hindsight we could argue this had happened at the previous month's Critérium du Dauphiné. On three mountain stages Pogacar toyed with his rival. And if there were any doubts about his superiority after the Critérium, they were banished on Hautacam. This led to a certain desperation about Visma-Lease a Bike's approach to the Tour. They set out to upset Pogacar, to do whatever they could to get under his skin. Their difficulty was finding a way. Their leader Vingegaard rode aggressively from the start which was unusual because the hilly stages of the first week did not play to his strengths. It was clear though that Vingegaard was riding strongly, perhaps as well as he has ever done. But on the short, sharp hills into Boulogne, Rouen, Vire-Normandie and Mûr-de-Bretagne, he could not hurt Pogacar. On every stage that Vingegaard finished alongside or just behind Pogacar, he was visibly pleased. That suggested he was content to just hang in there. His team sought to play with Pogacar's head. Their riders attacked not to break away but merely to provoke a reaction from him. He did react and when he realised what they were doing, he thought it ridiculous. Matteo Jorgenson got in his way at a feed zone on the seventh stage and that led to a little pushing match. On Friday's stage to La Plagne, Vingegaard refused to work with Pogacar to rein in the breakaway Thymen Arensman and that infuriated Pogacar. He ended up letting Arensman take the stage because he was not going to tow Vingegaard up to the breakaway. He also squandered his own chance of winning that stage. Visma wanted to get inside his head and they succeeded. At what cost to themselves? The operation was a success but the patient died. From this Tour, we learned why Pogacar loves racing against Mathieu van der Poel and why he chooses to ride the one-day Classics: Flanders, Roubaix, Strade Bianche, Flèche Wallonne and Liège–Bastogne–Liège. In these races, there is not the time or indeed the inclination to play what Pogacar sees as silly games. Visma have some soul-searching to do. They started the Tour protesting total allegiance to Vingegaard only to start looking for stage victories as soon as they thought their man was not going to beat Pogacar. What is certain is that Vingegaard no longer believes he can beat his rival. In this year's Tour, he has performed better than when beating Pogacar in 2022 and 2023. Last year was dispiriting for him. This year was worse. There were moments in the race when, sitting right behind Pogacar after he had attacked Vingegaard looked to check on those directly behind him. He is now as concerned by the riders creeping up on him as he is by one riding away from him. He knows that in a year's time, the German Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and the Scot Oscar Onley (Picnic PostNL) will believe they can challenge Pogacar. Lipowitz and Onley battled for the third step on the podium and even though the German got there, Onley will not be discouraged. At 22, he is two years younger than his rival and he showed he belongs at this level. From a promising third place in last month's Tour de Suisse to fourth in the Tour de France with eight top-ten finishes is some leap. The penultimate stage from Nantua to Pontarlier sent the peloton through the Jura, a 184-kilometre route that had four not overly severe climbs but the weather was horrible and the race difficult. An early break got a gap and they had the day to themselves. Jake Stewart, a British rider with Israel Premier Tech, was there and when the French rider Romain Grégoire and the Spaniard Iván Romeo crashed heavily 21 kilometres from the finish, Stewart found himself with just the Australian Kaden Groves and the Dutch rider Frank van den Broek at the front of the race. Hope did not last long as 16 kilometres from Portarlier, Groves attacked out of the group of three and went steadily clear all the way to the finish. It was a fine performance from the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider. Stewart finished sixth on the stage, his best result so far and now he will finish his first Tour de France. On his way to a fourth Tour victory, Pogacar was asked how this one compared to the others: 'Every year we say, 'This is the hardest Tour ever, the hardest I've ever done' but honestly, this year's Tour was something on another level,' he said. 'I think there was one day where we went a bit easier. Even today, we were almost all out from start to finish. Even though it was the hardest Tour, one of the toughest races I've ever done, I enjoyed it because I had good shape and good legs. But I am really looking forward to the last day in Paris.' Pogacar plans to take Monday off but says he will be back on his bike on Tuesday. There was some joy for Visma-Lease a Bike on Saturday as their veteran Dutch rider Marianne Vos won the opening stage of the Tour de France Femmes with a brilliant late attack. The 38-year-old overtook her team-mate Pauline Ferrand-Prévot approaching the line in Plumelec, and then held off Mauritian rider Kim Le Court in the closing metres of a gruelling uphill finish. Ferrand-Prévot looked set to win the 78.8km stage, but the Frenchwoman attacked too early and could not withstand the late surge from Vos.


BBC News
39 minutes ago
- BBC News
Woad 'feeling good' as she maintains Scottish Open lead
Women's Scottish Open third-round leaderboard-17 Woad (Eng); -15 S-Y Kim (Kor), Madsen (Den); -14 H-J Kim (Kor); -12 Korda (USA); -9 Reto (SA); -8 Choi (Kor), Schmelzel (USA).Selected others: -5 Maguire (Ire); -4 Hull (Eng); -3 Hall (Eng), Harry (Wal); +1 Fuller (Eng); +2 Williams (Wal); +3 Dryburgh (Sco).Full leaderboard Lottie Woad is "feeling good" as she takes a two-stroke lead into the final round of the Women's Scottish Open as the 21-year-old looks to mark her professional debut with a second tournament former world number one amateur from Surrey maintained her cushion at the top of the leaderboard after a third-round five-under-par 67 at Dundonald who won the Irish Open, turned professional last week after missing out on £400,000 prize money having finished just a shot outside the play-off won by Grace Kim at the Evian Championship, the women's fourth major of the said "there's always nerves" but hopes her recent experiences will work to her advantage. "I am excited for the opportunity and I've got the experience from leading in Ireland and other events that I've been in," she said. "I'm just going to try and use that - I'm feeling good."A fourth birdie in her first 10 holes briefly extended Woad's advantage to three shots and, despite picking up further shots at the 14th and 17th, a bogey at the short 15th - only her second in 54 holes - left her 17 was two better than Denmark's Nanna Koerstz Madsen and South Korean Sei Young Kim, who shot an impressive LPGA winner Hyo Joo Kim matched that to sit one back, while world number one Nelly Korda is five shots adrift on 12 under after a bogey-free last time a player won on their professional Ladies European Tour debut was Singapore's Shannon Tan at the 2024 Magical Kenya Ladies Open."There was a lot of attention kind of leading up, so this feels a bit more free now that I've got my [LPGA] card," Woad said."I don't think you can ever expect to be leading, but I knew my game was good and I was playing well the last month or so. I definitely hoped to be contending. I'm where I wanted to be."