Rory McIlroy has been vocal about his goal to go down in history as Europe’s best golfer. 

He inched closer to that Sunday in Dubai.

The Northern Irishman won the DP World Tour Championship by two shots with a final-round 69, capping a week where he was the only player with four rounds in the 60s on the Earth Course at Jumeirah Golf Estates. It was his third win in the event.

He also won the seasonlong Race to Dubai title for the third consecutive year and sixth overall, with the latter tying legendary Spaniard Seve Ballesteros, and an interview afterward showed just how much it meant to him.

“It’s really cool. I think everyone knows what Seve means to European golf, to Ryder Cup players,” McIlroy said. “He means so much to European golf and for me to be mentioned in the same breath, I’m very proud.” 

McIlroy’s 2024 season was bookended with DP World Tour wins in Dubai, with the Dubai Desert Classic in January and Sunday’s finale. He also won the PGA Tour’s team-format Zurich Classic with his good friend Shane Lowry and rolled by five shots at the Wells Fargo Championship, one of the Tour’s signature events.

But as is so often the case with the 35-year-old, there was heartbreak mixed in, most notably two short putts late in the final round which cost him the U.S. Open at Pinehurst. In a pre-tournament press conference in Dubai, McIlroy admitted how that loss still “stings” and that he’s motivated to match the two players ahead of him in the world rankings, Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele.

To that end, McIlroy said he spent three weeks in a swing simulator recently, working on an intense swing-training regiment. 

“I probably haven't liked the shape of my golf swing for a while, especially the backswing,” he said. “The only way I was going to make a change or at least move in the right direction with my swing was to lock myself in a studio and not see the ball flight for a bit and just focus entirely on the movement."

“Think doing this in the studio, it was a big key for me to just try to make a start on getting the swing back to where I want it to be. But it's an ongoing process, as you know, to get out here and play. When there’s sequences to the shots that you hit, you're always going to revert back to what’s comfortable. Hopefully, the more that I do over these next few months, it will bed in and get back to the shape I want to be in.”

For one week, the returns from that work appear to be strong.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as Rory McIlroy Hoists Two Trophies and Ties a Legend at DP World Tour Finale.