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.

“It will show people I am not a one hit wonder and it will prove to myself I can win a number of them, and it would be nice to get off that number a few guys are stuck on, and then to be able to call myself a multiple major winner.”

Winning The Open and succeeding countryman Darren Clarke as holder of the Claret Jug would be all the more special, given his discomfort playing in the wind and the rain of Royal St George’s a year ago, when McIlroy suggested adapting his game to suit links golf was not worth the effort.

The current world number two reiterated yesterday that those comments after his final round at Sandwich were borne of frustration and that his biggest motivation was breaking the cycle of nine first-time major winners in a row since Phil Mickelson won the 2010 Masters.

“It’s a massive incentive for me to get off that number,” McIlroy said. “There has been talk of the parity now in golf with the fields are so much deeper and so much tighter, so it would be nice to break out of that bunch, and if I could do that this week, it would be a great feeling.”

The Open has brought out the best and worst in McIlroy. He has made four cuts out of four since his debut in the oldest of the majors as an amateur at Carnoustie in 2007 but the best and worst of his 16 competitive rounds came back to back, at St Andrews in 2010, opening with 63 and then posting 80 on the way to his highest finish, tie for third behind Louis Oosthuizen.

His return to the tournament the following year did not produce the expected improvement, however, as McIlroy, burdened by his recent change in status from next big thing to major champion at the previous month’s US Open, struggled in the headlights at Royal St George’s.

A further year on, though, and McIlroy is enjoying the relatively low-key attention at Lytham.

“It is different this year,” he said. “It was always going to be hard after winning the US Open last year but this time around I have prepared well and I’ve got my work done.

“It’s been lovely just going about my business. It’s been nice to prepare and definitely not the madness that was going on last year. It’s nice.

“I’ve tried to keep it as low key as possible and just go out and go about my business and felt like I’ve done that pretty well.”

All of which puts McIlroy in a very good place as he prepares to consign the poor mid-season form that saw him miss the cut in his US Open title defence to a distant memory. He has not played competitively since tying for 10th place at Royal Portrush in the Irish Open three Sundays ago and a couple of days at Royal Lytham last week in the company of Graeme McDowell have served as a valuable refresher of the course he played so often as an amateur in the Lytham Trophy.

“I am very excited about the week ahead, and very excited how good my game is at present, and I’m just excited to get going. The golf course is always one I’ve enjoyed playing and I’ve played it a lot of my amateur days.

“I just wanted to come and play the golf course and keep playing it and get as familiar with it as I can.

“I’ve been here since last Thursday playing practice rounds so I feel as though I’ve got to know the golf course very well. I’ve got my game plan set and it’s now just a matter of going out there now and executing it.

“I was excited going into St Andrews at the Old Course in 2010 because The Open there is always something very special but I have a really good feeling about this one.”