Golf superstar Rory McIlroy is urging the sport’s governing bodies to expand the window in which major championships are held, saying the current schedule feels too rushed for both players and fans.
The major season currently runs over a four-month span — a compressed timeline that came about seven years ago when the PGA Championship was moved from August to May. McIlroy, who is chasing a seventh major title this week at the final major of 2026 at Royal Birkdale in Southport, England, says that change has hurt the sport’s public profile.
“I’d like to see the major season spread out a little bit longer,” McIlroy said. “The Masters is always going to have the build-up, but I think then PGA into US Open, US Open into here, it just seems like it’s very, very quick.”
He acknowledged there are benefits from a player’s standpoint when things are close together, but said the bigger picture matters more.
“From a player perspective, if you get on a bit of a run, it’s nice to be playing well and go from one straight into the next,” he said, “but for the sport as a whole and for, I guess, the general interest in the game, obviously I can see the positives in the major season being stretched out a little bit longer.”
McIlroy, the reigning back-to-back Masters champion, won his only Open Championship title 12 years ago. While he considers St Andrews his top choice on the Open rotation, he says Royal Birkdale — where he tied for fourth place back in 2017 — remains a course that fits his game well, even following a recent redesign of the layout.
“I’ve always liked this course. I first played here in the Amateur Championship and then played an Open back here in 2017 and did OK,” he said.
McIlroy also praised Birkdale’s reputation for fairness among links-style courses, noting that it rewards good shots in a way not all links venues do.
“One of the common things you hear about Birkdale is it’s very fair for a links golf course,” he said. “The fairways aren’t overly undulating, so when you land the ball in the fairway here, it seems like it stays on the fairway and there’s not a ton of blind shots.”
He added that if players were surveyed, Birkdale would rank among the most popular Open venues on the circuit.
