Rory McIlroy rejects £1.3m payday after showing true colours on money | Golf | Sport

Rory McIlroy is opting to skip this week’s Cognizant Classic and is instead playing a round at Augusta with his dad, Gerry, and the National’s chairman, Fred Ridley. The reigning Masters champion shook off some rust last weekend by finishing tied-second with Kurt Kitayama and one shot off the winner, Jacob Bridgeman, at the Genesis Invitational and earned £1.3million in the process.

That same amount of prize money is on offer for the Cognizant Classic champion; however, McIlroy, 36, prioritises “working on some things” over entering the PGA Tour tournament he won in 2012 to reach the top of the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time.

The Northern Irishman conceded after the Cognizant Classic that he failed to capitalise on the chances he gave himself. But when asked about how cruel it was that a putt finally dropped on the 18th hole, he played down the significance of that particular one.

McIlroy said: “No, not really. It probably earned me an extra 400, 500 grand, so it’s fine,” referring to the additional £445k in prize money for finishing joint-second rather than tied-third.

He then conceded: “I’ll rue basically all 18 holes yesterday and then the front nine today, like 27 holes where I failed to capitalise on the chances I gave myself. Once I started to trust my reads a bit on the back nine, and I went more with my first instinct, I putted a little bit better.

“I was reading too much into them, and then I’d see Jacob’s [Bridgeman] putt from the other side do something, I was like, ‘oh, that looked like it went more left than he thought it would’, so I’m sort of factoring that in. I was almost just giving them too much thought and not going with my first instinct, and that sort of cost me.”

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After skipping the start of this year’s Florida swing, up next for McIlroy are the Arnold Palmer Invitational and The Players Championship. McIlroy last won the invitational at Bay Hill in 2018, coming closest to repeating that success three years ago when he tied for second with Harris England, a shot off Kitayama.

The five-time major winner, however, is the reigning Players champion after beating J. J. Spaun in a playoff last year to become one of just seven players who have won it more than once, having also done so in 2019. Looking ahead, McIlroy said: “I feel like my game’s in really good shape.

“I’m looking forward to getting on some Bermuda greens over the next couple of weeks, but it’s feeling good, it’s feeling much better than it did in Dubai, which is a big step in the right direction. I just have to keep working.”