Rory McIlroy: Dubai, Grand Slam, and staying calm (Full Transcript)

[00:00:10] Speaker 1: If golf was a movie, Rory McIlroy would be among the cast of Hollywood A-listers. By winning the 2025 Masters, he finally completed the men's career grand slam, joining an elite club of just five other golfing legends. While he hails from Hollywood Northern Ireland, there's a second city across the globe that also claims him as its golden boy, and it's not LA.

[00:00:52] Speaker 2: It's a dream come true. It's something I've always wanted to do since I was a little boy, and I've sort of realised this dream today, and hopefully it's onwards and upwards from here.

[00:01:03] Speaker 1: Twenty years ago, Rory McIlroy nervously strode up to the first tee here at Emirates Golf Club. As a 16-year-old amateur, he was thrilled to be playing the Dubai Desert Classic on the same grass as his idol, Tiger Woods. Tiger won the tournament that day, but three years later, the trophy was in Rory's hands.

[00:01:30] Speaker 3: Well, thanks very much. Rory McIlroy, 19 years old, your first pro win. How does that feel?

[00:01:36] Speaker 1: Twenty years after his debut here, he's won the coffee pot-shaped dollar trophy a record four times, and he is thirsty for more. In 2026, Rory has returned to the course where it all began, fresh off the back of an epic season. In an exclusive interview, he considers past pleasures and future treasures, investing in sport, and why Dubai will always be a second home. And he shares his tips for putting under pressure.

[00:02:13] Speaker 4: And then just rock your shoulders back and through.

[00:02:18] Speaker 1: That goes in. Oh, I ringed it. Thank you. Good to see you. Pleasure.

[00:02:27] Speaker 5: Good to see you. How are you? I'm great, thank you. Good to be back in Dubai.

[00:02:30] Speaker 1: Well, Rory, you once said that golf wasn't about the money. It was about a place in history for you. And so I just wonder, given that career-defining year of 2025, whether you feel like you've nailed that place, or whether that destination is still sort of on the journey, as it were.

[00:02:53] Speaker 6: Where were you at?

[00:02:54] Speaker 5: I would have said before I won the Masters, if I were to do it and I were to join that Grand Slam club, I would have said I could walk away the day after and be completely satisfied with what I've done in the game. But then you do it, and you're like, well, I wouldn't want to stop. And the goalposts do keep moving. That's life. You don't have to be a sportsperson, but anyone that has goals and achieves them, you're always going to have to reframe and think, OK, what is next? So for me, it took me a while to reframe, because it was this massive moment in my life. But I think I've now come to terms with it, and I do think that there is other things that I still want to achieve in the game.

[00:03:35] Speaker 1: Which begs the question, how does a year like 2025 influence you in terms of preparation, in terms of motivation, in terms of equipment, for example? You changed your clubs. Just walk me through that.

[00:03:49] Speaker 5: I always look at my game and I always think, OK, where can I improve? What can I get a little bit better at? And also, 36, going to be 37 this year. I'm not that 25-year-old anymore. I don't mind saying that, OK, maybe I do need a little bit more help with my long irons, or I need to do some things, because it's not just golf. It's sponsorships, it's business, it's family life. There's a lot of different things that I'm being pulled in many different directions. And as I said, I'm not that 25-year-old that can stand and hit balls on the range for eight hours a day like I used to. So I think time management for me is a big thing going forward as well.

[00:04:25] Speaker 1: Listen, you have a really quite unique relationship, I think, with Dubai as a place, but particularly with this tournament. You played here as an amateur. You won here three years later in 2009 for the first time. Can you take me back to that first trip as a teenager? You arriving here, how did you feel? What do you remember?

[00:04:52] Speaker 5: I very kindly got an invite from the European Tour at the time to come and play as an amateur in 2006. And I'd always loved this tournament, watching it on TV. It's the middle of the winter back home. You see, and obviously back then, Dubai is not what it is today, but it's still this desert golf course, buildings going up. Obviously, I was so excited to have the opportunity to play, play in a tournament with Tiger Woods in the field. He was truly my hero growing up. I had a poster of him on my bedroom wall. So to be able to get up close and play in the same tournament as him, that was obviously, at that point, a moment of a lifetime as well.

[00:05:33] Speaker 1: Through various visits, Rory fell in love with Dubai and lived here for a number of years. His first major sponsor was the Dubai-based luxury hotel and property company, Jumeirah. He won his first two majors, the US Open and the PGA, wearing Jumeirah branding, which helped globalise both the name and the destination. What is it about this part of the world, this place, the Emirates, Emiratis, that you find so compelling?

[00:06:08] Speaker 5: I think to me, the vision, the vision that they have had to turn what was once a little fishing village into, you know, it's the hub of the world. You know, it's just, it's absolutely incredible, even since I've been coming here for 20 years, just the change and the speed in which things get done. You know, so you've got, you know, amazing visionaries, but you've also got a community of people that buy into that vision. And then you also see, you see how many people are moving here to the UAE and the opportunities that they have and, you know, just the different businesses that are here. And it's, it is absolutely incredible, but just that entrepreneurial spirit and the fact that people can come here, make something of themselves, be successful and feel like there's not a lot of obstacles in their way to getting to doing that. That's how I feel when I come here. It truly is, it is a second home to me.

[00:07:09] Speaker 1: Dubai is known for its relentless entrepreneurialism. And I just wonder how much you think that has rubbed off on you as you have begun to consider what happens off the course.

[00:07:24] Speaker 5: Yeah, I would say a part of it is seeing everything that's happened here, but it's also meeting the right people. You know, golf is the sport of business. You're playing in Pro-Am's every Wednesday and meeting the CEOs of some of the top companies in the world and being able to pick their brains and just ask them about their journey and what they did. Would they do anything differently? And if you had asked me when I was 21, did I enjoy Pro-Am's? I would have said absolutely not. But now it's a wonderful opportunity for me to learn.

[00:07:55] Speaker 1: Is there anybody specific that you will now say, I loved playing with X in a Pro-Am?

[00:08:01] Speaker 5: I would say the most important Pro-Am that I ever played was with a man named Jeff Rhodes, who is a partner at TPG, and that was back in 2019. Out of absolutely nothing and you fast forward seven years later and TPG and I have launched a sports fund together out of one game of golf. And then obviously building on that relationship. So I would say that, you know, that's the first one that springs to mind. That's been incredibly important. And just what, again, the opportunities, and this is why I try to tell a lot of the young guys on the range, like the opportunities that we all have every Wednesday, not a lot of other sports people get this. So you have to take advantage of it.

[00:08:45] Speaker 1: Let's talk about the TPG Sports Investment Fund, launched last year. What's the vision? What's the goal? Is there one sort of avenue that you guys have said, look, this is ours?

[00:08:55] Speaker 5: Look, I think there's very attractive sports investments where you could invest in teams or leagues or, you know, some of the stuff that you hear about in the news. But if you think about the world of sport, the amount of businesses that have to enable sport to run globally, like those are the sorts of things that we're interested in, because, you know, whether it's, you know, tech enabled businesses or ticketing businesses or, you know, things like this.

[00:09:26] Speaker 1: The picks and shovels.

[00:09:27] Speaker 5: The picks and shovels. Is it the sexiest thing? Probably not. But I think there's a massive opportunity there because as the as the sports world is expanding, you know, we're going to need these picks and shovels companies more and more and more.

[00:09:44] Speaker 1: TGL is a team based tech focused tournament that you set up with Tiger Woods. What's he like to work with?

[00:09:53] Speaker 5: He's great. He's amazing. Yeah, he's he's very passionate about what he does. I think anyone can see that from his career. And he's very he's single minded. And then when he puts his focus on something, it's it's all in. And that's and that's what he's been like with TGL, which has been amazing.

[00:10:11] Speaker 1: So Roy versus Tiger is going to give us a pinch me moment.

[00:10:15] Speaker 5: Yeah, I remember seeing him for the first time in 2002. I went to watch a World Golf Championship event in Ireland and to think, you know, 20 years later, we've built this business together, an incredibly successful business. You know, it's only, you know, it's in its second year, but it's already it's it's it's been amazing. And it's definitely got a lot of traction in the States and the players are bought in and they love it. And yeah, to to to do something like this with your hero. And I say, you know, I I I wasn't able to go to his birthday party last week, but I got to record a video for him. Tiger, it's your old buddy Rory here. I just want to wish you the very happiest of birthdays. And the one thing I said is you hear a lot of people say, never meet your heroes. But with him, like it couldn't be further from the truth. You know, so that's that's a really cool thing.

[00:11:08] Speaker 1: Right. You and I chatted in 2016, 10 years ago. It is the Olympics this year, 2016. If you had one win, would it be the Masters or a gold at the Olympics in Rio?

[00:11:21] Speaker 5: The Masters. I definitely wait four years for another chance at the Olympics if I could win the Masters this year.

[00:11:28] Speaker 1: Yeah, that was 2016. Yes. Given that you won the Masters 2025, how important is an Olympic gold to you now?

[00:11:36] Speaker 5: Yeah. So I think when we had that conversation, I had never played in an Olympics and golf golf is it's not new in the Olympics. It's just it was it was there way back in the day. And then obviously it's been, you know, it's back in the games. I've played Japan and I've played Paris. I lost in a seven way playoff for a for a bronze medal in in Tokyo and I finished fifth in Paris. So I've been really close to the medal. And the one thing I said in Tokyo was I've never tried so hard to finish in third place. It is. I think when you go to the games, you just get you get caught up in the in the spirit of everything. And just this unbelievable melting pot of athletes and, you know, different cultures and, you know, people that have just been working so hard for four years for this one opportunity. And I think as time goes on, the Olympics will be will become more and more important in the game. Whether it gets to the level of the majors, we will see. But I would, you know, I said last year I had three remaining goals in my career. I wanted to win the Masters. I wanted to win another away Ryder Cup and I wanted to win an Olympic gold. I achieved two of those last year. So obviously I have to wait until L.A. to try and get the third. But I would that would be, you know, yeah, it would be amazing. It would be absolutely incredible. And something like I never dreamed of doing it because it wasn't a dream that I felt like was available to me. But after playing in two Olympics, it's it's an amazing experience. And I'd love I'd love to have the opportunity.

[00:13:15] Speaker 1: After the break, when the going gets tough, how does Rory shut out the noise? There he goes. And his mum's battle to fill his trophy cabinet.

[00:13:27] Speaker 5: So they sent someone down to one of the souks and just got a random coffee pot, put it on a put it on a platform and said, there you go. There's your replica trophy.

[00:13:36] Speaker 1: The European team's 2025 Ryder Cup victory in New York followed an epic battle of skill, determination and perhaps even more resilience. Rory came in for a particularly torrid time as supporters of Team USA hurled abuse and squeaked their rubber ducks. So as we headed to the practice green, I was keen to find out how he stays focused under pressure. I don't want to embarrass you. So you might just want to show me how you. Absolutely. I will. I will do that. And then I'll show you how it's really done. Oh, OK. All right.

[00:14:15] Speaker 5: OK, so this hole, let me see. Not a lot of break on it. Pretty flat. So what I I concentrate on my right arm. So I try to get the putter in behind the ball with my right arm. And I always try to get my the inside of my right arm touching my torso. So tucked in. And then when I get set, I take my stance. I gently put my left, my left hand on. And then all I do from there is I just feel like I rock my shoulders.

[00:14:43] Speaker 1: Oh, so it's not moving.

[00:14:44] Speaker 5: And look, and it goes in.

[00:14:46] Speaker 1: Oh, God. I was going to show you how to do it, but clearly you've done this before. Talk to me about how important both physical and mental resilience are in golf.

[00:15:02] Speaker 5: I think the physical resilience is maybe not as high in importance as some other sports. Obviously, it's not as physically demanding as some other sports. But I would say it's I think there's a higher demand mentally. You're out here for five hours a day. You know, there's so many ebbs and flows. And even in just one round of golf, let alone a week long tournament. And then you multiply that by 25 times a year. And then, you know, so it's a it cannot up quick. So the mental resilience is much more important.

[00:15:36] Speaker 1: And what sort of strategies do you use to manage your stress? I'm thinking about the crowds at the Ryder Cup in 2025. I mean, how do you deal with that and stay focused?

[00:15:51] Speaker 5: Focus on my breathing. And I've done research like on myself into this with my team. I'm quite a like a mouth breather and that can trigger like a stress response. So when I'm on the course and I feel like I'm in pressure situations, all I think to myself is keep your mouth closed, just keep your mouth closed. And you then breathe through your nose and you start to breathe better, lower through your diaphragm and automatically your nervous system calms down a little bit and you start to feel a little bit better. And it's just that one little one little trigger. Keep your mouth closed.

[00:16:27] Speaker 1: Let me have a go at this while I am, while we talk there.

[00:16:30] Speaker 4: Do you want to stand in? And then just rock your shoulders back and through.

[00:16:37] Speaker 1: If that goes in. Oh, wow, ringed it. Good try. That's good. By the way, I'm never going to get anywhere like that close if you're not with me. So you are now going to have to come with me and play golf every single time I do. Go on. Give me a give me another demonstration.

[00:16:52] Speaker 5: One more go. Let me see.

[00:16:53] Speaker 1: That was that was very good. In those really intense moments, do you have flashbacks to success and failure?

[00:17:03] Speaker 5: No, no, not at that, like not in those moments. In between shots, I'll maybe think of something will pop into my head. I've been in this position before. I've you know, and you draw on that experience. Hopefully good stuff, good experience, not bad. But yeah, you're always trying to you're always trying to look at. I think I get this from my dad. People talk about resilience and my resilience over my career. My dad is like the eternal optimist, right? You know, he'll find something good to say at a funeral, you know, whatever it is. And I get that from him. So I always I've always just kept believing.

[00:17:38] Speaker 1: He must love Dubai then. Because this is this is the only optimistic place.

[00:17:43] Speaker 5: My parents love Dubai. Oh, now if we were playing.

[00:17:51] Speaker 1: Yes, same thing. I might even have taken this hole from you. Let's have another go. OK, if you can do it.

[00:17:58] Speaker 5: OK, no pressure. All right. Goes a little right at the hole. There we go.

[00:18:05] Speaker 1: There he goes on this before. And as I understand it, you don't watch an awful lot of the events that you've played in a lot of.

[00:18:14] Speaker 5: Yeah, it's all about memories, right? Yeah, I I learned the hard way. I won my first major in 2011, the US Open. And I watched so much of it back that I started to forget what it looked like through my own eyes. I can only remember from watching through the TV. So and I never want to feel that way again. I want to remember how I felt, what I was thinking, what I was feeling. Because again, if you need to draw on those moments, you know, then you then you can. And then it's you know, it's not what everyone else sees. It's what you've seen.

[00:18:47] Speaker 1: 2006, you were an amateur here. I assume that you would have stood and watched some of the pros as well as practicing yourself on here. Do you remember being on here the first time?

[00:18:58] Speaker 5: I do remember being on here the first time. I mean, you know, the whole the whole thing has changed a lot. I mean, it's gotten a lot bigger and Topgolf wasn't here and whatever. But yeah, and I remember one of the cameramen giving me giving me his camera so that I could follow Tiger inside the ropes. So I played on Thursday morning and then I went and I ran around 18 holes again Thursday afternoon following Tiger. So good, good memory.

[00:19:23] Speaker 6: You didn't make the cut, of course. No, but that meant that you could follow Tiger Woods around, right? Yeah.

[00:19:27] Speaker 5: For the weekend. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So silver lining.

[00:19:31] Speaker 6: So you were pretending to be a photographer with accreditation. I love that idea. I love that.

[00:19:36] Speaker 1: Let's go and have a look at the 18th, because that, of course, is a really important green to you. Yeah, it is. Won your first tournament as a first tournament.

[00:19:46] Speaker 5: Yeah, I've had many, many great moments on that green.

[00:19:50] Speaker 1: Come on, let's do that. Emirates Golf Club made history with the first grass course in the Middle East when it opened in 1988. Beyond the green oasis with its Arabian designed clubhouse, the city skyline has transformed from desert to metropolis. The 18th green of the Majlis course has witnessed victories by an impressive cast of Dubai Desert Classic champions, but none more so than Rory McIlroy. He's determined to convert his four fingered celebration into a fist full of trophies.

[00:20:30] Speaker 7: Rory likes this tournament because he's got lots of friends in Dubai, which is a great start, and he really enjoys his time here. But the golf course is set up really well for him. It's tight. You can hit the ball long and straight, and the course is set up like a major. So the top players always come to the top. The cream rises to the top. You look at the winners of this tournament. We've got Tiger Woods, Seve Ballesteros, Ernie Els, multiple winner, and also Rory, four time winner.

[00:20:57] Speaker 8: I think Rory feels very at home here. So wherever he is in Dubai, he's very relaxed. Everyone welcomes him, but also gives him his space as well. So I think he really enjoys being here. He can be himself and loves playing golf, loves the whole experience of being in Dubai.

[00:21:15] Speaker 1: So I'm just going to start us off by doing this.

[00:21:17] Speaker 3: Have a look at this. Rory McIlroy, 19 years old. Your first pro win. How does that feel?

[00:21:22] Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels absolutely fantastic, you know. It was a great day today. I battled well. And, you know, Justin, you know, he fought well down the stretch. And I was I was able to to come in and, you know, get a great up and down on the last switch. You know, it's just I can't put it into words at the minute. It's just been it's been such a good day.

[00:21:42] Speaker 6: You couldn't put it into words then. Could you put it into words now? Yes, I can. I think I'm a little better at that. I think I've touched more media training than back then. This means so much to you. This 18th, of course, is where you won your first pro tournament. Yeah.

[00:21:55] Speaker 5: Go on, just reflect on that. It was hard as well. I'd had two chances. I think I had two pretty good chances to win in previous months. I wasn't able to get it done. I got beaten in two playoffs, one in Switzerland, one in Hong Kong. And then I went on a tear in the middle of the round. And I think I was five ahead with five to play. And then I started to make some bogeys on the way in and get nervous and all that. And and yeah, I was one ahead, laid up into a good spot on 18. And then I overshot my wedge shot into the back bunker. There's there's before the joy. There's just relief, relief that you're that it's over and you've got it done and you haven't messed up and everything's fine. So there was that. But it's also, you know, I was thinking last year at the Masters, I beat Justin Rose in the playoff and my first win. It was Justin and I battling down the stretch.

[00:22:47] Speaker 6: Were you thinking about that last year?

[00:22:49] Speaker 5: No, I mean, I thought about it after after the Masters. I was just like, this is incredible. Like, you know, even you think about, you know, the threads that run through your career. And for me, it's like, OK, Dubai, Justin Rose. You know, there's you know, there's a lot of different things. Amazing. Yeah.

[00:23:04] Speaker 9: So this is a this is familiar to you. This is very familiar.

[00:23:08] Speaker 5: This is the fact this is the big coffee pot. Yeah. So I've got one of these at home. So what?

[00:23:16] Speaker 9: You got one at home?

[00:23:17] Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. So so the story behind that is I won in 2009 and my mother just like I got a replica. I think the replica back then was actually of the clubhouse. I think that was the trophy. And my mother was on to the the tournament committee and executives for years. And my son should have got a replica, should have got a coffee, should have got a trophy. So I think they were sick and tired of hearing of this. So they sent someone down to one of the souks and just got a random coffee pot, put it on, put it on a platform and said, there you go. There's your replica trophy. It's it's one of the most iconic trophies in our sport. You know, you think about, you know, just its its uniqueness and where it is. And but and yeah, this has been it's been an incredible tournament with many. You know, I've been part of great finishes here that when I haven't won as well. But obviously the four times that I have won have been have been really nice.

[00:24:11] Speaker 1: It's been an absolute joy and a delight. We wish you the very, very best. Honestly, 20 years.

[00:24:17] Speaker 5: Incredible. Hopefully 20 more.

[00:24:22] Speaker 1: The global golfing calendar constantly offers opportunities for future success or setbacks, both on and off the course. And for Rory McIlroy and Dubai, it's a shared journey on which the sun seems reluctant to set.