Rory McIlroy was in a rueful and deflated mood at the conclusion of the 2020 PGA Championship at Harding Park, his final round score of 68 seeing him finish the week on two under par, eleven shots behind eventual winner Collin Morikawa.
After a strong 2019 season, in which he won the Players Championship and the Tour Championship, McIlroy began this year at No. 1 in the world but six successive tournaments without a top-ten finish in 2020 have seen Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas leapfrog him in the world rankings.
In the majors meanwhile, his drought stretches into six years, the 2014 PGA Championship win at Valhalla his last victory.
Speaking to reporters afterwards, McIlroy suggested - perhaps partly flippantly - that he may not be the player he once was.
"I don't know. Maybe I'm just not as good as I used to be. I can't really put my finger on it. I go out there and try my best every single day. Some days I play better than others. You've just got to keep going and keep persisting and see if you can do better the next time.
"I feel like the golf that I've played in the majors has been sort of similar to the golf I've played outside of them, and I've won some big events and played well and had a good season last season.
"This has been one of the tougher tests that we've faced since coming back. The Memorial a few weeks ago was really tough, and then it's been quite challenging this week, with penal rough.
"I gauged these two events as sort of the barometer as to where my game was, and I'm going to pretty much finish in the same spot, around 30th. I haven't really deviated much from par the last few weeks. I've made a lot of birdies, but I've made a lot of bogeys, and that's sort of been the story of my golf since coming back.
"There's been enough good stuff in there, I'm just making a few too many mistakes and I need to just try to clean that up going forward and get ready for the next few events. I think most guys will probably have six events left to the end of the year, so that's what I'll have, I think."
In a fairly frank press conference, McIlroy also admitted he was "taken aback" by Brooks Koepka's barbed pre-round comments about Dustin Johnson's major record.
"I certainly try to respect everyone out here. Everyone is a great player, and if you've won a major championship, you're a hell of a player. So it's hard to knock a guy that's got 21 wins on the PGA Tour, which is three times what Brooks has."
