Carefree Masters champ Rory McIlroy, unburdened by LIV criticism and golf politics, is the world’s best golfer again

Rory McIlroy dumped a 60-yard wedge into a greenside bunker on his 11th hole of the day and made bogey on a birdie hole from the best possible position. But, after two rounds on a classic course he hadn’t seen before Tuesday, he was still tied for fourth.

With two rounds to play he was just five shots behind Keith Mitchell at the Truist Championship, and, he admitted, hasn’t even played well yet.

He’s just that good.

Again.

Against all odds, at the age of 36, McIlroy has turned back into the carefree Northern Irish lad with the pointy nose, the dark, curly locks stuffed under his hat, and the bounce in his step who burst onto the greater golf consciousness in 2010 with a win at this very tournament, his first on the PGA Tour.

Without a second thought to more important matters, he’s crushing bombs down Philadelphia Cricket Club’s tight fairways and flipping wedges into greens and sinking snaking birdie putts, like he did on No. 18, his ninth hole on a sodden Friday morning, one of only four birds at the closing hole of the Wissahickon Course.

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Rory is back. After an 11-year major-championship drought in which he succeeded Tiger Woods as the voice and conscience of golf, got married, had a daughter, filed for divorce, then reconciled, Rory’s back to being Rory.

That means, with all due respect to World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, McIlroy is the best golfer alive. He has been for about eight months. And it‘s not particularly close.

Why?

Because he’s not negotiating the future of professional golf, as he did as a member of the PGA Tour’s leadership the last six years. He’s not gauging the morality of sports-washing the oppressive regime of Saudi Arabia, as he’d done as the Tour’s unofficial spokesman since the LIV Tour began in 2021.

No more distractions.

Isn’t that why he’s been so good since September?

“I think so,” McIlroy said after his second round at the Truist Championship. “I want to play golf. The reason I got into this game was to shoot scores and try to play the best golf possible and not really be concerned about how the Tour is run, or the business of the Tour.”

McIlroy resigned as president of the Tour’s policy board in May, but that wasn’t when he caught fire. Not quite. There was another, more seminal moment, when he seemed to more fully accept that a reconciliation with LIV players was inevitable.

In early September, McIlroy agreed to play a made-for-TV event in December called “The Match.” It pitted McIlroy and Scheffler, the PGA Tour’s top players, against Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, the two highest-powered LIV talents (McIlroy and Scheffler won).

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McIlroy has had 13 starts worldwide since committing to “The Match” in September. He has won four times, finished second twice, and finished in the top five nine times. Nine. That included a win at The Players Championship, always the most competitive tournament on the schedule.

Scheffler missed two starts after he cut his hand while using a wine glass to cut homemade ravioli pasta into circles over the Christmas holidays, so he has just 10 starts. Still, he has two wins and five top-five finishes, but one win was at Tiger Woods’ closed-field, 20-man Hero World Challenge in which only three top-10 players participated, and the other was at the Byron Nelson last week outside his hometown of Dallas, a nostalgia start with only two players inside the top 30.

McIlroy played in neither event. Scheffler is not at the Truist, a Signature Event being held at Philadelphia Cricket Club, a substitute site. They will meet again next week at the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, N.C., where the Truist normally is held.

Head-to-head, it‘s been all Rory. He beat Scheffler by three strokes at the Masters. He beat Scheffler by eight strokes at The Players.

“It‘s been a very consistent period, for sure,” McIlroy said. “Even when I feel like I haven’t played my best, I find a way. I think that‘s when I talk about being a more complete golfer — if one part of my game isn’t on, then I can maybe lean into another part.”

That‘s a huge departure from how McIlroy has played in spotlight moments in the last few years. Cam Smith ran him down at the 2022 British Open (then defected to LIV). Wyndham Clark held him off at the 2023 U.S. Open. He led the 2024 U.S. Open by two shots entering the final round, but a skittish putter produced two late bogeys and handed the title to DeChambeau.

The fact that more fully accepting the likes of DeChambeau in September sparked his most successful run in a decade is the stuff of which sports psychologists dream, not to mention big decisions about the cumbersome FedEx Cup.

“Certainly, not involved too much in the politics of everything, and even just not being involved, being on the board of this Tour, and talking about changes to the Tour Championship and all that — like, I have no idea what‘s going on,” McIlroy said.

He’s most potent when he’s least involved.

In 2014, after McIlroy won the British Open and PGA Championship, he’d won four majors in four years, was the No. 1 golfer in the world, and was hailed as the “Next Tiger.” As it turned out, he was not. He simply had too much Phil Mickelson in him.

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On Friday, when he dumped that wedge shot into the bunker on No. 2, it looked more like Phil than Tiger.

“I made what I feel are some uncharacteristic mistakes compared to how I’ve played the majority of the year,” McIlroy said.

Really? McIlroy makes lots of mistakes, just like Mickelson, so they aren’t exactly uncharacteristic. However, just like Phil, McIlroy is so good that his mistakes aren’t always fatal.

After all, “uncharacteristic mistakes” earned McIlroy three bogeys and a double on the back nine in the final round at Augusta National. However, just like Phil, iconic approach shots on No. 15, No. 17, and on the first playoff hole, No. 18, delivered him the title anyway.

He is what he is. Right now, he is the best golfer in the world. And it‘s easy to see why.

“I think, at this point,” McIlroy said about the politics and the policies and the finances of the game, “I don’t care.”