Rory McIlroy in search of early-season form at PGA Championship

There’s a line of demarcation in Rory McIlroy’s 2019-20 season, and it’s the PGA TOUR’s three-month layoff in which the entire sports world paused for the coronavirus pandemic.

Before the TOUR shut things down after the first round of THE PLAYERS Championship in March, McIlroy – the defending FedExCup champion and Player of the Year – had six straight top-five finishes, including a win at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions.

Since then? Five starts and just one top-30 finish, a T11 at the Travelers Championship.

“Before the world sort of shut down, I was playing some really good golf, consistent,” McIlroy said from San Francisco’s chilly TPC Harding Park, where he is gearing up for this week’s PGA Championship. “And then yeah, having that three-month break, coming back, everything sort of changed. Everything feels different, in the competitive arena, anyway.”

Not that McIlroy has faded into obscurity. Hardly. He’s fifth in the FedExCup, and had retained the No. 1 world ranking until losing it to Jon Rahm last month. (Rahm has since lost it to Justin Thomas.) No, the results for McIlroy have just been – flat.

“My game doesn't feel that far away,” he said. “I feel like I've played pretty well. I just haven't got a lot out of my game. Haven't scored as well as I was doing before the lockdown. … Haven't been efficient as I was back then. Short game hasn't quite been as sharp.”

The question is why, and can he get it back.

Coastal-adjacent TPC Harding Park, where he won the 2015 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, beating Gary Woodland in the final, is one of his happy places on the schedule, so a return to form there this week would not be entirely unexpected. Maybe there’s still some McIlroy mojo hovering up there in the marine layer.

Granted, the layout and routing are different, and the course is playing longer, and with narrower fairways. The damp conditions are more or less the same. The sweater weather remains. Also, as McIlroy noted, the PGA setup man is still Kerry Haigh, whom he likes. (The PGA is the lone major McIlroy has won twice, at Kiawah in 2012 and Valhalla in 2014.)

As for his relatively lackluster results, the chattering class has speculated about the why, and McIlroy hasn’t denied it. Having noted a certain week-to-week sameness in golf’s (and other pro sports’) quiet new normal, he suggested he has struggled to play without galleries.

“He draws a lot of his energy from the fact that fans of all nationalities pull for him,” said Golf Channel analyst and former world No. 1 David Duval. “He’s a world-favorite player. Being out here where there are so (few) people around can take some adjustment.”

McIlroy wouldn’t deny that, but knows things aren’t likely to change overnight as the virus shows no signs of going away. And he knows he’s going to have to find his A-game on his own.

“I've said in the last few weeks that I've struggled to adapt to it,” he said, “but it is what it is. You need to go out there and do the best that you can. We all wish that we were playing in front of fans and have it feel like a real major championship, but I think we're just lucky that we're able to play golf tournaments at this point and grateful to PGA of America and all the governing bodies for adapting and pivoting and being able to put on these championships.”

And again: He’s not far off.

“I shot a 63 at Colonial,” he said. “I shot a 65 to make the cut at Hilton Head; a 63 at Travelers, a couple of good scores last week in Memphis. So the good stuff is in there. I was just saying earlier, it's just the sharpness and being efficient with my scoring.

“Turning the 73s that I've shot into 70s,” he added. “That's the sort of stuff that I think when you're sharp and you're playing a bit and you're sort of in your groove you're able to do that a little better, and that's the stuff that I haven't been able to do since coming back out here.”