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Rory McIlory has enlisted the help of Jack Nicklaus as he aims to win two of the year’s remaining Major championships.
McIlroy switched off his phone and even gave away his laptop to cope with the aftermath of his split from fiancee Caroline Wozniacki last month, an approach which paid instant dividends as he won the BMW PGA Championship just four days later.
The former world number one’s phone will remain silent during this week’s US Open and his Twitter account will be less active for the “foreseeable future”, McIlroy opting to revert to more old-fashioned means of communication with 18-time Major winner Nicklaus.
“I spent two hours with Jack Nicklaus last week in his office in Palm Beach and had a great conversation about everything; business, golf, brand, the whole lot,” McIlroy revealed in his pre-tournament press conference at Pinehurst on Wednesday. “And I got a lot from that.
“He said to me ‘How the hell can you shoot 63 and then 78 (in the first two rounds of Nicklaus’s Memorial Tournament). I said I wasn’t meaning to, Jack. I’m trying not to!
“He said to me he was never afraid to change things up in the middle of a round if it wasn’t going well. (If) he felt like he wasn’t swinging well, he’d make a swing change right then and there.
“I had a great conversation with Jack and I feel very honoured that I’m able to call him up for advice if I need to. He’s been very generous with his time. Some of the things he said to me, I’m really thinking about going into this week. He was a great US Open player (winning four) and hopefully some of those little nuggets of wisdom that he passed on to me might help this week.”
McIlroy initially approached Nicklaus during the Memorial Tournament, where he went on to finish 15th, only to have to change his plans at the last minute.
“I blew him off, actually, to be honest,” McIlroy added. “I was supposed to go for dinner at Jack’s house on Tuesday night, but I got in a little bit late, so decided to leave it until Wednesday morning and met him at his office.
“He’s always been really generous with his time with me, offered any sort of advice that I wanted or needed. To have that at my disposal has to be an advantage in some way. I don’t ring him up, I ring his secretary up and say, ‘I’d like to schedule a meeting, please’.”
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