Rory McIlroy Wants To Golf Less, Spend More Time At Home

Rory McIlroy claims he spent too much time in the first half of 2021 on a golf course and wants to spend more time at home. It's maybe a little hard for us normal folk to understand how someone gets sick of a job we pay far too much money to do in our free time, but it's all perspective. If we were already millionaire athletes with literally zero financial reason to do a job any longer -- we'd surely want a break every once in a while, too.

McIlroy has played in 30 events since last June, which is a TON of golf, and reports surfaced this week that Rory threw his 3-wood into the trees off a New Jersey turnpike out of frustration. We've all been there in the parking lot of our local public muni, except with our putters.

"This morning, I was tired. Look, we all had a long week last week as well, but just summoning up the effort to get out of bed and get to your 7:20 pro-am tee time, it took a little more effort today than it usually does," McIlroy said. "But yeah, just everything. It's a lot of golf. It's hard to feel fresh at this time in the season. It all just sort of catches up with you."

Again, difficult to feel sorry for a professional athlete who has made more than $400 million since he entered tour play, but it's unlikely he wants sympathy. Rory is probably just answering with honesty because that's what we insist on when we thrust a mic in a player's face on a daily basis. Are pro golfers suddenly not allowed to get tired or sick of their jobs like we do?

Of course they are. And we should also remember that Rory became a father just last September. Can't forget that athletes need to sleep and nothing craps on a sound night's sleep like a newborn. Maybe a botched parlay, but that's about it.

From the sounds of it, Rory also just seems to like his family and he wants to be around them more.

"I want to spend a lot more time at home," he continued. "I wanted to get home even in between these two events, so I flew down from New York Monday night, spend a few hours with my daughter yesterday -- a few hours with her and (wife) Erica, and then I flew up here yesterday afternoon. Yeah any chance I get to go home, especially at this point in the season when we've been away so much. I'm going to take it."

Props to Rory for putting his family at the forefront when he understands the impact of his presence at home. Rather than make excuses for his fatigue and pretend he's fine because it'll bother a few over the top blue collars, he admits when he's down.

McIlroy tees it up next at the BMW Championship this weekend, and it sounds like he had a bit of a mental break with the fam. We'll see if it impacts the way he plays.