Paul McGinley: Rory McIlroy no match yet for Tiger Woods

Former Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley believes Rory McIlroy has a long way to go before he deserves to be compared to Tiger Woods.

The two players head to Augusta for the Masters in starkly contrasting form, with McIlroy needing to win a first green jacket to complete the career grand slam and Woods having only confirmed his participation in the year’s first major on Friday.

Woods has started just two events in 2015, shooting a career-worst score of 82 to miss the cut in the first of them and withdrawing through injury after 11 holes of the second.

However, McGinley experienced first hand how much Woods dominated the game to amass 14 major titles, including the ‘Tiger Slam’ of US Open, Open Championship and US PGA in 2000, as well as the 2001 Masters to hold all four major titles at once.

“Rory is evolving as a player and he’s evolving as a person too. He’s not the finished article. Even now at 25, it’s not right to compare him to Tiger Woods.

“What Tiger Woods has done in his career is a yardstick. Rory is still evolving towards that…

“Also, the great thing about Tiger was the way and the varying conditions that he won in. You see him win at Augusta obviously, but you see him winning at the Open in Hoylake (in 2006), on a firm, bouncy golf course.”

McIlroy is well aware he is on the verge of joining Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Woods in an exclusive club by winning all four majors, but McGinley believes he does have one thing in his favour.

“What’s been clever about what Rory’s done is that he hasn’t put a number on the number of majors he wants to win. He’s not chasing anybody’s record. And that’s been very clever.”