Rory McIlroy Talks Schedule Change Ahead of Masters, Confirms Visit to Butch Harmon

As he's done for the last decade, Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy is trying to figure out how to conquer Augusta National Golf Club and become just the sixth player to win golf's Grand Slam. With typical sky-high expectations leading into last year's Masters, McIlroy disastrously missed the cut and knew he'd have to make a change before 2024's edition.

The four-time major champion elected to switch up his playing schedule during the early portion of this season, as he typically played several DP World Tour events before coming to the United States in early to mid-February. McIlroy made the trip to the U.S. early and teed it up at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am for only the second time in his career. He added the Cognizant Classic to his schedule and played three consecutive weeks during the Florida swing, and he's now in San Antonio for the Valero Texas Open this week. McIlroy has only played TPC San Antonio once since the last time he won a major in 2014.

While the results haven't been ideal for McIlroy so far this year, there have been plenty of positives with his game. Still, he hasn't been able to put all the parts together for four consecutive days. He's quietly finished inside the top 25 in his last four starts entering Valero, but top-25s aren't what the 34-year-old is gunning for at this stage of his career — it's victories.

With only one week left before the Masters, McIlroy shared his thoughts on how the new schedule has him feeling entering Augusta National.

"I think it's been good. The results haven't been what I would have liked, but I've learned a lot about where my game is," McIlroy said. "If I hadn't played as much over the past couple of months, I maybe wouldn't have started going down this path that I'm on and just trying to clean up the technique a little bit. I'm working on a couple of slightly different things than I was working on before... if I can get through that and get my game to a really good spot where I can play great now from April to August, I'll be happy."

There's been significant internet speculation the past few days over whether McIlroy did or didn't visit notorious golf instructor Butch Harmon recently. McIlroy confirmed that he did work with Harmon in Las Vegas for a few hours in March, mentioning how he's done this multiple other times in his career and has known Butch since he was 14 years old.

"Yeah, I think after THE PLAYERS and just struggling through that Florida swing with my swing and with some of the misses I was having with my irons, I thought to myself I'm obviously missing something here and I would love to get a second opinion and have [Harmon] take a look, a second set of eyes. If there's one guy I want to go and get a second opinion from, it's him.

"He said a couple of things to me that resonated... it was a worthwhile trip and I feel like I've done some good work after that. This is a good week to see where that work has gotten me."

It's not surprising to hear McIlroy express his feelings on the current state of professional golf at this point, given how outspoken he's been about LIV Golf and their CEO, Greg Norman. But McIlroy mentioned the PGA Tour's TV ratings thus far in the season for the first time on Wednesday afternoon, as they are down by over 20 percent through the Florida swing.

"If you look at the TV ratings of the PGA Tour this year, they're down 20 percent across the board. That's a fifth, that's big," McIlroy said emphatically. "I would say the numbers on LIV aren't great either in terms of the people tuning in. I think with the fighting and everything that's [gone] on over the past couple of years, people are just getting fatigued of it and it's turning people off men's professional golf, and that's not a good thing for anyone."

LIV Golf's Bryson DeChambeau voiced similar conversations ahead of LIV Doral this weekend in Miami, calling for unity in men's professional golf.

"It needs to happen fast. It's not a two-year thing," DeChambeau said about the PGA Tour and LIV Golf merger. "It needs to happen [sooner] rather than later just for the good of the sport. Too many people are losing interest."

With the two tours having their best players combine in the field for the Masters next week, it will be intriguing to see what the TV ratings look like. But as McIlroy said to the media before exiting, it's still best for everyone to come together and get this mess sorted out either way.

"It will be interesting to see how the major championship numbers fare compared to the other bigger events because there's an argument to be made if the numbers are better and you've got all the best players in the world playing, then there's an argument to say, 'OK, we need to get this thing back together.'

"But on the flip side, if the numbers aren't as good, it's an argument to still say we need to put everyone back together because people are losing interest in the game even if they don't want to tune into the four major championships... You know 20 percent's a pretty jarring number this year."