Rory McIlroy has 2 questions to answer entering U.S. Open

Rory McIlroy’s week in Canada ended earlier than expected at the 2025 RBC Canadian Open as the reigning Masters champion went 71-78 to miss the cut by a mile at TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley.

The five-time major champion struggled mightily off the tee this week in Canada. After playing with a backup driver at the 2025 PGA Championship after his gamer failed the CT test, McIlroy showed up in Toronto with a TaylorMade Qi35 driver with a shorter build.

The combination didn’t work as McIlroy hit just 42 percent of his fairways in two rounds and lost 2.187 strokes off the tee. With the U.S. Open at Oakmont looming, McIlroy has to get back in the lab to find a driver that allows his superpower to shine as it normally does.

“So I went back to a 44-inch driver this week to try to get something that was a little more in control and could try to get something a bit more in play,” McIlroy said after missing the cut in Canada. “But if I’m going to miss fairways, I’d rather have the ball speed and miss the fairway than not. I was saying to [caddie Harry Diamond] going down the last, this is the second time this year I’ve tried the new version, and it hasn’t quite worked out for me. So I’d say I’ll be testing quite a few drivers over the weekend.”

Back in March, McIlroy played the first three rounds of the Arnold Palmer Invitational with TaylorMade’s latest driver and woods before paying $995 for an Uber to bring his old gamers to Orlando for the final round.

After his second try with TaylorMade’s newest driver flopped, McIlroy will spend the next handful of days trying to find the right weapon off the tee heading to Oakmont. Until he has that driver in hand, the 36-year-old Northern Irishman’s game will be a big question mark heading into the brutal examination known as the U.S. Open.

“Of course it concerns me,” McIlroy said. “You don’t want to shoot high scores like the one I did today. Still, I felt like I came here obviously with a new driver thinking that that sort of was going to be good and solve some of the problems off the tee, but it didn’t. Obviously going to Oakmont next week, what you need to do more than anything else there is hit fairways. Still sort of searching for the sort of missing piece off the tee. Obviously, for me, when I get that part of the game clicking, then everything falls into place for me. Right now, that isn’t. Yeah, that’s a concern going into next week.”

McIlroy also admitted earlier in the week that he has been dealing with a career Grand Slam hangover after his historic win at Augusta National in April. The newly minted Masters champion has now gone T12-T7-47-MC in his four starts since the Masters victory, with the T12 coming at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, a team event.

After getting off to a blistering start that included wins at Pebble Beach, the Players and the Masters, McIlroy left a disappointing week at the PGA Championship needing to recalibrate after achieving a lifelong dream.

“I don’t know if I’m chasing anything,” McIlroy said on Wednesday. “I would certainly say that the last few weeks I’ve had a couple weeks off, and going and grinding on the range for three or four hours every day is maybe a little tougher than it used to be. You have this event in your life that you’ve worked towards, and it happens. Sometimes it’s hard to find the motivation to get back on the horse and go again.”

McIlroy took two weeks off in between the PGA Championship and the RBC Canadian Open. He said he used that time to “reset” his goals for the season and determine where he’s “at in his own head” and how he wants to attack the rest of the season.

The hope was that four days in Canada would spark him toward a strong finish to the 2025 season.

Instead, driver troubles derailed his tournament early, and now he will enter what promises to be a brutal challenge at Oakmont with questions surrounding his greatest strength and what to expect from him during the back half of a season that is forever etched in golf history.

How he answers them — or if he does — will determine whether or not this year has any more magic in store for McIlroy.