Rory McIlroy modifies swing during three-week isolation

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Rory McIlroy can finish the season as the European tour’s top player for the sixth time with a win at the Abu Dhabi Championship this week.

He will attempt to do so with a new swing.

The No. 3-ranked McIlroy said he has been hunkered down in a studio — first in Florida, then in New York — for three weeks, just hitting balls at a screen with a modified swing and not even looking at the flight of his shots.

He hasn’t liked the shape of his swing for a while, he said Wednesday, and wanted a more robust one that could hold up in the most pressure-filled moments following a number of missed chances this season. The most notable was at the U.S. Open in June, where he missed two putts in the 3-foot range in the final three holes on Sunday to pave the way for Bryson DeChambeau‘s victory and extend McIlroy’s decade without a major title.

“The only way I was going to make a change, or at least move in the right direction, with my swing was to lock myself in a studio and not see the ball flight for a bit and just focus entirely on the movement,” McIlroy said.

“It’s something,” he added, “just to make my golf swing more efficient, and then if it is more efficient, then it means it’s not going to break down as much under pressure. If I look at my year, the one thing that I would criticize myself on is the fact that I’ve had these chances to win.”

McIlroy has won twice this year, at the Dubai Desert Classic and the Wells Fargo Championship, and has had four second-place finishes, including recently at the Irish Open and the BMW PGA Championship on the European tour.

That has left the Northern Irishman frustrated but well clear in the Race to Dubai rankings that determine the best player of the year on the European tour. A win in Abu Dhabi can seal the title and remove some suspense, at least for McIlroy, from the final event of the season, the World Tour Championship in nearby Dubai next week.

“If I go out and win this week, obviously you know, it makes it a bit boring next week,” the four-time major champion said. “But I won’t find it boring. It will be lovely.”

A sixth Race to Dubai title — it used to be called the Order of Merit — would put McIlroy level with the late Seve Ballesteros on the all-time list and only two behind Colin Montgomerie, who has a record eight.

“I’m a European player,” McIlroy said. “I would like to go down as the most successful European of all time. Obviously Race to Dubai wins would count to that but also major championships and hopefully I’ve got a few more Ryder Cups ahead of me as well.

“So that’s something that I would like to [do]. I think [it] is a goal that’s quite attainable over the next 10 years.”