Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland on the practice range during a practice round of the 2021 PGA Championship held at the Ocean Course of Kiawah Island Golf Resort on May 18, 2021 in Kiawah Island, South Carolina. (Photo by Darren Carroll/PGA of America)

Michael Jordan’s luxury Florida golf club is so exclusive it boasts just 75 members.

So what better place than The Grove XXIII - nicknamed Slaughterhouse XXIII so often does Jordan gut his rivals financially with his clubs - or Rory McIlroy to sit down post-Masters with Dr Bob Rotella to talk through the mental tenets he must master if he’s to make the latter half of his career as successful as the first.

If this is The Last Dance for the pride of Holywood, he’s going to give it his all, and after sitting face to face in a room for eight hours, he unquestionably laid the foundations for his first win for 18 months in the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow and what he hopes will be an end to a near seven-year Major drought in this week’s PGA Championship at Kiawah Island.

The Grove XIII is so exclusive, it’s where Phil Mickelson will take up membership when he completes his move from California to Florida. After all, you can’t walk 10 yards at The Bear’s Club, where McIlroy and Shane Lowry are members, without tripping over a fellow PGA Tour pro.

Jordan built a course tricked up to give him an advantage in those famous big money matches he loves with fairways narrowing considerably the further you drive the ball.

A Jordan win is almost a sure thing but betting how many Majors McIlroy will win is a risky business.
Can he match Seve Ballesteros and James Braid with five? Will he tie Nick Faldo’s six or even overtake the great Harry Vardon and win eight?

Who knows? But after finally seeking out Rotella and explicitly asking questions about how he helped Pádraig Harrington and Darren Clarke win their Majors, McIlroy has arguably made a more valuable addition to his team than Pete Cowen providing he stays the course.

Unsurprisingly, Rotella’s message is the same as the one he gave Harrington (and Clarke), and that’s to forget about perfection and put all his focus on loving the objective of this maddening game - putting the ball in the hole.

“They’re both talented both have a lot of expectations and big ideas,” Rotella said of McIlroy and Harrington, Irish golf’s most successful golfers of all time. “To me, what was wonderful about last week was Rory had an okay ball-striking week but not a great week. To hit three fairways and win, to me, that’s really playing golf.

“As you get better and better and have higher expectations, you think the only way you can win is just to pure it and hit every ball where you’re looking. But the bottom line is most of the time when you win is when you’re not feeling that great. For me, really playing golf is hitting it, finding it and getting it in the hole. I thought he did just a great job of having fun doing that last week, and that’s how you win a lot of golf tournaments.”

Rotella, the secret to getting McIlroy back in track is persuasion him to cast off all expectations and play for the pure childish joy of playing the game.

KIAWAH ISLAND, SC - MAY 17: Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland chips onto the ninth green during a practice round for the 2021 PGA Championship held at the Ocean Course on May 17, 2021 in Kiawah Island, South Carolina. (Photo by Darren Carroll/PGA of America)

“I think Rory got back to having fun playing golf last week,” Rotella said of Quail Hollow. "He decided, 'I’m going to pick a target, see the shot and commit to it and wherever it goes, I’ll accept it, hit it and get it in the hole.' It sounds pretty simple, but it obviously isn’t that easy to do. When you’re in that state of mind, it’s amazing how suddenly your short game comes to life.”

Course management was a big part of the McIlroy-Rotella summit but so too were expectations and the importance of turning the clock back to zero, especially this week.

“I always say it starts all over again every week and every day,” Rotella explained. “Everybody is now talking about his win, and they‘ll be all excited about him going to the PGA to a course in Kiawah Island where he’s won, and there will be expectations.

“But he’s got to go to the first tee and throw the expectations in the trashcan and say to himself, I’ve got to get my head in the same place every time I tee it up, in the next tournament and then for the rest of the year and then in the Ryder Cup and then every major he plays this year and for the rest of his life. I don’t care if he does any more than he did with his attitude last week. But the challenge is to be an every day player. Getting in that place every day, that’s what’s hard.

“No one is so talented they can win not being in the right place. Players of his level are not out there filled with doubt and scared to death. We’re talking about a little bit of not being in the right place versus being in a great state of mind.

“You could see all day on Sunday, and all week at Quail Hollow, there was no hanging the head. His head was up, and he was having a good time, and he was playing golf.”

As for the pressure of going seven years without winning a Major, they spoke little.

“This is what people find hard to understand,” Rotella explained. "I’m not too concerned about what players have been doing in the past, and I don’t spend a lot of time telling them what they’re doing wrong.

“I say, look here’s what I know and you’ve got a put your personality on it. I want him playing with the joy he played with when he was a kid. I told him, you’ve got to go out there and have fun playing the game you say you love.”

Rotella chuckles down the line when asked if he has high hopes for McIlroy’s Major quest this summer.

“Why not?” he said, still laughing. “I probably had before I sat down with him. He’s pretty good. If he gets in the state of mind he was in last week and does it regularly, great things will happen for him.

“He has a lot of talent, and when he gets out of his way, there’s a good chance of good stuff happening.”