Major ambition driving Rory

So keen is Rory McIlroy to move his already glittering career onto the next level, he would regard victory in this week’s Open Championship as “my biggest achievement in golf”.

For the 23-year-old from Holywood, the time has come to leave the ranks of the one-hit wonders and start building a legacy of major championship successes. Thirteen months on from his record-breaking breakthrough victory at the 2011 US Open, McIlroy will tee off in the first round at Royal Lytham & St Annes tomorrow afternoon intent on a more meaningful major number two.

“It would be my biggest achievement in golf,” McIlroy said yesterday. “To win that first Major was very important, and to move to world number one in the middle of the year was nice but to win the Open Championship and that second major would definitely mean more to me than winning that first one.