Rory McIlroy ready for next challenge after ‘climbing Everest’ with Masters win

McIlroy ended a difficult week at the US Open on a high on Sunday, going some way to exorcising the demons of an Oakmont course that had tortured him for the first three days.

The 36-year-old played his best golf of the week, with the sort of accuracy and guile that he would have longed for on Thursday and Friday, carding a three-under-par 67 to finish on seven over.

It was not just the bruising difficulty of Oakmont which had him feeling fuzzy-headed this week, though, as McIlroy still suffers the hangover of that momentous win at Augusta in April, where he became just the sixth male player to complete a career grand slam of majors.

He has accepted that he needs time to regain his focus and knows next month’s Open on home soil in Northern Ireland is the place to do it.

“Look, I climbed my Everest in April, and I think after you do something like that, you’ve got to make your way back down, and you’ve got to look for another mountain to climb,” he said. “An Open at Portrush is certainly one of those.

“If I can’t get motivated to get up for an Open Championship at home, then I don’t know what can motivate me.

“I just need to get myself in the right frame of mind. I probably haven’t been there the last few weeks.”

Next month’s final major of the year is just 65 miles from where he grew up playing at Holywood and it will be his first visit to Northern Ireland since winning the green jacket and completing the set.

“I feel like playing an Open at Portrush already (in 2019) and at least remembering what those feelings were like and those feelings that I was probably unprepared for at the time,” he said.

“Obviously it will be my first time sort of in public back home after winning the Masters. It should be a really nice week.

“Hopefully I can celebrate with them on Sunday night with the Claret Jug and the green jacket.

“It will be amazing to go home and play in that atmosphere and see a lot of people that I still haven’t seen yet. I’m really looking forward to it.

“It was nice to end this week with a bit of a positive note with the way I played today, and yeah, I’ll just be looking forward to and trying to get myself prepared for Portrush.”