NEW DELHI (AP) — Since completing the career Grand Slam, Rory McIlroy has been constantly looking for new ways to inject some freshness and spark into his golf.
Turns out two of his longtime Ryder Cup teammates are providing some inspiration.
For this week’s DP World India Championship, McIlroy has brought along a new look — baggy golf pants.
After all, Tommy Fleetwood has been wearing them for a while.
“I have watched and I have admired Tommy Fleetwood over the past year,” McIroy said, with a smile, on Wednesday’s DP World Locker Room show about his style that has generated plenty of chatter in New Delhi this week.
“And in my everyday life, when I don’t have to wear what is my golf uniform, I wear a lot of wide-legged pants. It is the in-thing, the fashionable thing.”
But how, McIlroy was asked, do they feel to play golf in?
“These hit a little low, maybe a little short … I understand they are maybe not as well-fitting as they need to be,” he said, “but they are a work in progress.”
Also in the works for the Northern Irishman is a replica of what he calls his “performance trailer” that he uses in the United States to aid his fitness and recovery during and between PGA Tour events, in an effort to gain an edge over rivals.
Now, he wants one for when he plays on the European tour, too.
McIlroy said that idea came from tennis great Novak Djokovic but also fellow golfer Justin Rose.
“I decided to pull the trigger on it when Justin won in Memphis last year,” McIlroy said. “He’s 45 years old, playing great, contending in major championships, and at that time I was 36. I was like, I want to play really well for the next 10 years — I feel like I need to do something like this.”
McIlroy hopes to have that up and running by the summer of 2027 — by which time, who knows, he might have a record-tying eighth Order of Merit title that crowns the year’s No. 1 player on the European tour.
There are four events remaining in this season’s Race to Dubai and McIlroy will play in three of them, starting in India.
He is third in the standings, behind Patrick Reed and Eugenio Chacarra, but there’s little between the three players and plenty of points on offer in the season-ending events in India, South Korea, Abu Dhabi and finally Dubai.
While Reed has stumbled of late thanks to an injury-prompted withdrawal at the BMW PGA Championship and a missed cut at the Spanish Open, Chacarra is finishing fast by climbing above McIlroy thanks to a tie for third at the French Open and a tie for second in Spain.
“It’s still anyone’s game,” Reed said Wednesday.
The American said he was swinging freely after the shoulder injury he sustained at Wentworth. He didn’t play in France or at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship and returned to shoot 73-71 in Spain, failing to make the weekend.
“For me, I was itching about getting back and getting out and playing,” Reed said. “Did I come back too early? Who knows. At the end of the day the good thing is I can’t hurt it worse, and because of that, I have the confidence and the comfort level to come out here and execute and perform at the highest level.”
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The Associated Press