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While the DP World Tour has created a new award to mark his achievement in completing the career Grand Slam — the Rory McIlroy Award for the best major season by a DP World Tour player — the Masters champion is not ready to walk off into the sunset just yet. "I don't think my desire's gone," McIlroy (36) said ahead of the DP World Tour Championship, where he hopes to win his seventh Race to Dubai and get to within one of Colin Montgomerie's record eight Harry Vardon Trophy wins. "It's certainly not gone. But I think it's just one of those things where I'm not going to have to pick and choose where to sort of place my desire and what I want my goals to be. "Yeah, I'm certainly not less driven, but maybe just more driven in focused areas. I don't feel like chasing as much anymore. "I'm not out chasing the Grand Slam. I'm not chasing these things. I'm very content with what I've done in the game. I'm still driven to do more, but you know, it's sort of a pinpoint to drive in certain directions." McIlroy attributes his decision to step away from the politics of golf and resign from the PGA Tour's Policy Board in November 2023 as a key factor in his enjoying the best season of his career this year. "You know, you can't keep all the plates spinning at the same time and something had to give,” he explained. "And that was the thing that ultimately I had to stop doing to pursue some of these other things. "If you look at my golf since then, it's been a pretty good run. It's been a nice - maybe a bit of a clearer head and a little bit more time to spend on practice and putting that into my game." He plans to play a more global, yet slightly lighter, schedule going forward, without compromising his commitment to the European Tour. "I have a clear head and I'm out of all the political stuff in golf, basically, and I can just focus on playing and playing where I want to and making myself competitively happy by playing in the tournaments that I want to play," he added. "And then having more time to make myself personally happy with doing the things I want to do away from golf, travelling with my family and showing my daughter different parts of the world and doing things like that, I think is a very nice place to be in life." McIlroy extended his Race to Dubai lead over Marco Penge when he shot a blistering 62 on Sunday to tie for third in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, and should he win his seventh Harry Vardon Trophy this week, he would move to within one of Montgomerie's record of eight wins. "Yeah, of course, to move from six to seven, to go one past Seve would be amazing," he said. "To get one closer to Monty would be amazing. "But I think when I say I'm not chasing anything, I think if I focused my energy on certain tournaments and try to play well at certain tournaments, then the Race to Dubai is almost… it sort of takes care of itself. "You know, hopefully these season-long awards are something that just come along because you've won some big tournaments along the way. "So yeah, I guess you could say I'm still chasing that, but I think that's just more a byproduct of playing the good golf that I know that I can." While he won't be eligible to win the Rory McIlroy Award and initially told DP World Tour chief executive Guy Kinnings it was too soon for the Tour to name an award in his honour, he sees it as a "huge honour." "It's amazing," he said. "When Guy approached us about it after the Masters, my first inclination was it's a bit soon, a bit early. And the more I thought about it, I'm not going to be around forever playing. "So it will still be amazing to have any name, after my playing days, my name associated with this tour, and hopefully have an award named after me, that means something to future generations that they want to strive towards to achieve." As for this week, he's looking forward to another battle with Penge and the rest of the chasing pack. "Obviously, a great day on Sunday," he said. "It looked like I was probably going to have a similar cushion over Marco to what I had last week. "I was able to turn it on on the back nine and make a few birdies and give myself a chance to win the tournament, but also a little bit more of a lead going in here. "So I thought last week was overall pretty good. I certainly played really well on the weekend. Found myself in a familiar position going into this week, going out last on Thursday, and you know, be good to tee it up again alongside Marco again. I'm excited for a great week. "I feel like my game rounded into some really good form over the weekend, and hopefully I can continue that from Thursday on."
