Examining Rory McIlroy’s Major Championship Chances After Winning AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

For the world’s most elite-level golfers, success is often a double-edged sword, the immediate celebrations muted by dialogue of developing expectations toward even greater accomplishments.

It’s a notion which has sent the likes of David Duval spiraling, having ascended the game’s mountaintop only to have the world’s observers wondering whether he can do it again and again and again. One which leaves us remembering Phil Mickelson as a U.S. Open disappointment rather than a six-time runner-up.

It should come as little surprise that Rory McIlroy’s victory at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am this past weekend has so expeditiously led to questions such as, “Can he keep this going?” and “How many times will he win?” and of course, the all-important, “Will this finally be the year he wins a fifth major championship?”

The odometer currently sits at 38 starts over more than a decade without a major title for Rory, who owns 21 top-10s during that time, including eight years with multiple results in that range. It is simultaneously a complicated conglomeration of success and failure which is difficult to measure against the achievements – or lack thereof – of most others in their given workplace environment.

And yet, we’re going to keep asking that question, until it finally gets answered.

As I do most Sunday nights, I hosted SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio’s postgame coverage of McIlroy’s victory in the aftermath. During this very discussion about the impending majors, analyst and former PGA Tour member Brendon de Jonge brought up a prescient point about this year’s four venues: There might not be a rotation which is more perfectly suited for Rory.

With McIlroy currently at +175 to win a major this year, let’s break down his odds at each one of ‘em.

Masters Tournament

• Augusta National
• Current odds: +800
• Past performance: Four top-fives, seven top-10s in 17 starts

Much as it once felt like an inevitability that Greg Norman would win a green jacket, then another inevitability that Ernie Els would win one, it’s long been considered another inevitability that McIlroy will someday hold this title, yet he’s done just enough to fall on the wrong side of these expectations, like his predecessors.

Since taking a back-nine lead into the 2011 edition of this event, only to find hidden cabins with his tee shot on the 10th and ultimately finish in a share of 15th place, Augusta has been a place of demons for Rory. At this point, he’s tried everything to shake the curse, from giving it the utmost importance to treating it like every other tournament, from making multiple scouting missions beforehand to showing up cold that week, from an aggressive course strategy to ultra-conservative.

In the process of missing the cut two years ago, he was essentially laughing to himself with each bogey, as if resigned to the idea that he’d never solve this golf course and never claim the career grand slam.

Perhaps the rest of us aren’t so exasperated, believing that at age 35 he could finally win here.

There are a few reasons why Rory has for so long been considered inevitable at Augusta, and his booming, high draws off the tee might be foremost amongst that rationale. At Pebble Beach, he also gained strokes against the field with his irons, wedges and putter.

If the Masters really is the complete test of a player’s game, then he’s at least aced the first pop quiz.

PGA Championship

• Quail Hollow Club
• Current odds: +750
• Past performance: Two wins, eight top-10s in 17 starts

McIlroy’s shortest odds for any of this year’s four majors have little to do with the fact that this is the one he’s captured most recently – a 2014 triumph at Valhalla – and everything to do with the location of this edition.

The PGA of America will return to Quail Hollow in Charlotte, N.C., for a second time. In 2017, Rory finished a discouraging T-22, well behind winner Justin Thomas, but this has served as the site of four regular-season victories at the erstwhile Wells Fargo Championship, including last year’s five-stroke triumph.

In fact, there isn’t a course where McIlroy has won more times as a professional than this one.

If we’re looking for even more reason to like him here, there’s this: Unlike in 2017, the PGA is now contested in mid-May, which is very nearly the same date on the calendar as the Wells Fargo and the course should be playing similarly to those conditions, providing even more of a comfort level for him.

U.S. Open

• Oakmont CC
• Current odds: +900
• Past performance: One win, four top-10s in 17 starts

When McIlroy claimed the 2011 U.S. Open by a whopping eight strokes in just his third appearance at the event, it was presumed that he’d win a bushel of these trophies.

After all, he represented the new generational breed who could conquer a tournament which had started placing a premium on power over precision.

Instead, he followed the win at Congressional with just one top-10 and four missed cuts in his next seven U.S. Open starts, including at Oakmont in 2016 and each of the following two years.

It wasn’t until 2019 when Rory began to decipher this event once again, finishing in a share of ninth place that year and getting progressively closer to another title ever since, going T-8, then T-7, then T-5 before runner-up results in each of the last two years.

The most recent U.S. Open will linger as his greatest opportunity to win a major in the past decade, missed short putts on the 70th and 72nd holes leaving him one heartachingly stroke shy of eventual winner Bryson DeChambeau.

If this six-year trend is to continue, though, there’s nowhere else to go after two second-place finishes than into the winner’s circle.

The Open Championship

• Royal Portrush
• Current odds: +800
• Past performance: One win, six top-fives in 16 starts

If there was ever a time for the Golf Gods to smile upon McIlroy, it would’ve been at the 2019 edition of this event, when it returned to Royal Portrush in his native Northern Ireland for the first time in 68 years.

Instead, those karmic deities mocked him.

Rory’s first tee ball in Thursday’s opening round went out of bounds, leading to a bitter 79 that was perhaps only more distasteful after a 65 the following day left him one stroke off the cut line.

There’s no reason to believe Portrush will serve him any better this time around, other than that he’s now been-there, done-that and could be less influenced by the pressure of trying to win in his home country.

Overall, this event has been hit-or-miss for McIlroy in the past, without a whole lot of in-between. He won at Royal Liverpool in 2014 and has five other top-fives, but has also endured seven results outside the top-40, including an uninspired missed cut at last year’s tournament.