PONTE VEDRA BEACH — The most intriguing question among golfers on Wednesday at the Players Championship will also be the most intriguing question on Thursday.
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Following a brief range session at the back range at TPC Sawgrass, reigning champion Rory McIlroy held an even more brief press conference in which he provided an update on the back injury that led to his withdrawal last Saturday from the Arnold Palmer Invitational. The headline is that he still hasn’t committed to playing this week—he’s slated to tee off at 1:42 p.m. ET Thursday—and is taking the injury “hour by hour.”
“It’s better than it was,” he said Wednesday. “I hit up until a 6-iron on the range there and it felt OK … so, yeah, we’ll see. I’m taking it sort of hour by hour. But it feels better. That’s all I can say. I couldn’t stand to address the ball on Saturday morning on the range at Bay Hill, and it’s obviously better than that.”
McIlroy said that he wasn’t in pain, and that the sensation while swinging was “more like sensitivity,” with muscle fatigue around the area in his glutes and hip flexors and cramping in the adductor muscle in his leg.
The good news is that he’s not concerned about making matters worse.
“It’s not structural, it’s not joint, it’s fine,” he said. “It’s purely muscular sort of discomfort and fatigue. Obviously, I’ll listen to the professionals, but there’s nothing that I can do that’s going to harm that.”
The trigger for the injury was a recent workout at the gym where he overextended in a hinge pattern, he said, but his range of motion has already improved. His hope is that it improves as rapidly as a similar injury that threatened to keep him out of the 2023 Tour Championship, but that had almost disappeared by Sunday.
He said that he’ll likely make the final decision during his range session tomorrow, but that if he does play, he’s not worried about preparation. A year ago in the weather-delayed Players, McIlroy beat J.J. Spaun in a playoff.
“I’ve been playing here since 2009, so it’s not like I don’t know the place,” he said. “We’re going to go walk nine holes now with a wedge and a putter just so I can get a feel for the rough around the greens and how firm the greens are. It seems like a pretty different setup this year than what it’s been in previous years in March. … Like lines off tees and clubs off tees, I know all of that stuff; it’s just getting a feel for sort of how the ball’s reacting on the greens.”
If there’s one concern that remains, it’s the clubs longer than a 6-iron that he wasn’t quite ready to try on Wednesday, and that he’ll have to attempt Thursday morning. There is one consolation, though, if he encounters difficulty—with the shape and firmness of Sawgrass, his driver won’t figure as prominently as it would on most courses.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
