Six-time Grand Slam champion doesn’t like Rory McIlroy’s future Grand Slam prospects
Rory McIlroy endured a controversial major drought before winning the Masters last April, although one golf legend now says it will be “difficult” for McIlroy to take advantage of the opportunity more Future major titles.
Towards belfast telegraphSix-time major champion Nick Faldo, who like McIlroy is a star on the European Ryder Cup team, said it would be difficult for McIlroy to replicate the emotional high he achieved when he won the Masters earlier this year and completed the career major.
“It’s like climbing Mount Everest, you don’t turn around and say, ‘Let’s go up there next month,'” Fedor said when asked if he expected McIlroy to win more majors. “There were so many emotions at Augusta National and you can’t recreate the emotion of winning a major like this again, so I think it’s going to be difficult for Rory to win another major.”
McIlroy himself explained the challenges Fedor mentioned.
“Listen, you dream about that last putt at the Masters, but you don’t think about what’s going to happen next,” McIlroy said at the U.S. Open in June. “I think I’ve always been a player who has a hard time playing after big events, after winning any game. It’s always hard for me to perform with motivation the next week because you’ve just accomplished something and you want to enjoy it, you want to enjoy the fact that you’ve achieved a goal.”
After winning the green jacket, McIlroy did not win again on the PGA Tour in 2025, although he did win the Irish Open in September and was a key member of Europe’s Ryder Cup team that won at Bethpage Black.
He is 36 years old and has five Grand Slam titles. While it would be easy to suggest that he would struggle to find the motivation to win more majors, as Fuldo did, the opposite seems just as easy to play out: McIlroy is free to play without pressure.
“He’ll either be disappointed to win 10 games or ecstatic to win five,” Fedor said.
In the same interview, while Faldo said it might be difficult for McIlroy to win more titles, he was full of praise for the prospects of world number one Scotty Scheffler.
“Scotty seems to be very clear-headed right now,” Fedor said. “He’s in that great moment where he believes in his game 100 percent. Just like Tiger. Scottie goes into every game with a lovely mentality and routine thinking, ‘How do I find a way to win this game?’ And other people are just trying to wait until Sunday. Some guys are going to choke on Thursday, but Scottie’s not choking right now, which is awesome.”
You can read the full article belfast telegraph The story with Faldo is here.
As for McIlroy, you can see his performance this week. He is making headlines at the Australian Open.
