McIlroy is going to play less golf in 2025

Rory McIlroy is going to play less golf in 2025, reportedly dropping the number of events from 27 to 20.

However Canadian golf fans can exhale as it appears the national championship is still on his schedule.

McIlroy told Telegraph Sport that the grind of playing up to 30 events a year is getting old.

“Hey, I’m 35 and have been out here for 17, 18 years,” he said in the interview, “so I'm just going to go to the places that I enjoy and where I play well.”

The four tournaments he will skip next season, he stated, are the Cognizant Classic, the Valero Texas Open, the RBC Heritage and the FedEx St. Jude Classic.

The first two may be understandable but the RBC Heritage is a Signature event with a guaranteed $20 million purse and elite field, while the FedEx St. Jude Classic is the first tournament of the PGA Tour playoffs. However, McIlroy has said he wants to be well rested for the majors. It’s been more than a decade since he captured one of those four tournaments.

While it’s not confirmed, it’s expected that McIlroy will return to the RBC Canadian Open, slated for June 5-8. In his last four starts at the tournament, he’s won twice and finished tied for fourth and tied for ninth. At last year’s event, he told reporters he would return to play in Canada “for as long as they’ll have me.”

While he may be playing less golf on the course, McIlroy will be playing indoors with the launch of the TGL. His team, Boston Common, has five events on its schedule, starting on Jan. 27. Each is a one-day, two-hour event. The top four teams advance to the playoffs at the end of the regular season.

He’ll also add an event at the end of this year. On Dec. 17, he will team up with Scottie Scheffler to take on LIV players Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka in The Showdown, a made-for-television, 18-hole match.