CHARLOTTE, N.C. – There may not be a better venue than Quail Hollow Club for Rory McIlroy to make his return to the PGA TOUR. He has won three times at the annual site of the Wells Fargo Championship and twice set the course record. He won his first PGA TOUR title here in 2010, authored a seven-shot victory five years later and is the most recent winner at Quail Hollow.

This week, McIlroy is making his first start since a missed cut at Augusta National, where high expectations entering the week hurt his bid to complete the career Grand Slam and made his poor performance even more difficult to handle.

“It sucked,” McIlroy said of the Masters. He withdrew from the following week’s RBC Heritage, marking the second time he had missed one of the Designated events on this year’s new-look TOUR schedule. McIlroy had already missed the first Designated event of 2023, the Sentry Tournament of Champions.

“I was ready to play all the way through,” McIlroy said Tuesday after he was asked if he thought he’d have to miss a second Designated event. His Masters performance was the last straw, however, after a tumultuous 12 months. As a member of the PGA TOUR Policy Board, McIlroy has played a key role in the transformations to the TOUR and its schedule that have taken place over the past year.

“I think I have always thought I had a good handle and perspective on things and where golf fits within my life,” he said Tuesday, “but I think over the last 12 months I had sort of lost sight of that and I had lost sight of the fact that there is more to life than the golf world.

“I think I gained a little bit of perspective, and once I disconnected I could see things a little clearer and see where everything fits within my life. It was a good reset.”

Had he played the RBC Heritage, McIlroy said, “I would have been doing myself a disservice and doing the people around me a disservice.” He realized during his hiatus that golf had “totally consumed” him for the past year.

“That’s what I’m looking forward to going forward … understanding there are other parts of my life that are important as well,” he said.

McIlroy spoke Tuesday from an event at The Puttery, a bar and indoor miniature golf course that he is an investor in. Tuesday evening’s event celebrated FedEx’s 50th birthday this year, and McIlroy was on-site as the reigning FedExCup champion. He beat NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin in a putting competition as part of the celebration.

The Masters is the lone major standing between McIlroy and the career Grand Slam. It is an achievement he has been chasing since 2015, after he won the previous year’s Open Championship. McIlroy began 2023 with a victory in Dubai and had a runner-up at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard and third-place finish in his last start before the Masters, the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play. Shooting 31 on Augusta National’s second nine on the eve of the Masters only added to McIlroy’s expectations for himself.

“Honestly, I thought I was going to have the best Masters I have ever had,” said McIlroy, who finished second at last year’s Masters. “That’s not the right mindset to have. You need to be thinking about the present moment.”

McIlroy said he didn’t touch a club for more than two weeks after the Masters, spending part of that time on an anniversary trip with wife Erica in Manhattan. He said he did not give himself sufficient time in the fall and winter to process all that had occurred in 2022, including his third FedExCup victory but also a heartbreaking loss at The 150th Open at St. Andrews.

“I don’t know if I fully sat down to reflect on stuff,” he said Tuesday. “It was nice to have three weeks to put that stuff in the rear-view mirror and focus on what’s ahead.”