Shane Lowry will be looking to take his recent fine form into this week's Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass.
The 2019 Open champion, who has not won a PGA Tour event in five years, has shown his quality in recent weeks, finishing in the top five at the last two events, the Cognizant Classic and the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Lowry held a share of the lead on Sunday ahead of the final round, however, he, like the entire field, could not live with world number one, Scottie Scheffler, who romped to the title.
And now the Offaly man will be hoping to continue his upward trajectory - moving from world number 57 to 37 in recent weeks - playing alongside American contenders Tony Finau and Will Zalatoris for the opening two rounds of the "fifth major", teeing off at 6:02pm (all times Irish) on Thursday.
McIlroy is coming off a disappointing Sunday at Bay Hill, where he stumbled to a final-round 76.
Rather than grab his opportunity to reclaim the number one ranking, McIlroy saw the distance between him and Scheffler grow further with a tie for 21st.
The 2019 champion finished T33 at last year's Players and will tee off at 12:35pm on Thursday in a featured group along with American Jordan Spieth and Norway's Viktor Hovland.
Seamus Power is among the late starters on the opening day, teeing it up at 5:18pm with Italian former Open champion Francesco Molinari and American Grayson Murray.
Meanwhile, Scheffler will begin his defence of the title paired alongside fellow Americans Rickie Fowler and Justin Thomas for the first two rounds.
Coming off a dominating victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, where he beat the entire field by two strokes on Sunday, Scheffler is the first defending champion to arrive at TPC Sawgrass as the top-ranked player in the world since McIlroy in 2020.
The event was ultimately canceled that year due to the Covid pandemic.
Scheffler will begin his quest for a repeat in the afternoon wave on Thursday, teeing off in at 5:40pm in one of the marquee pairings released Monday.
The trio will tee off at 12:35pm on Friday. Fowler won the Players in 2015 while Thomas claimed the trophy three years ago.
Thursday's afternoon wave will include other marquee groups comprised of defending US Open champion Wyndham Clark playing with fellow former champions Collin Morikawa and Brian Harman.
Also teeing off in the morning wave of the opening round will be the group of Patrick Cantlay, 2004 Players champion Adam Scott and rising Swedish star Ludvig Aberg.
They will all be looking to get off to a fast start to put pressure on Scheffler, the pre-tournament favourite.
"Everybody, I guess, now is kind of looking up at me at the top of the rankings and trying to take me down, so in order to stay up there, you got to put in a lot of work," said Scheffler on Sunday.
Additional reporting by Reuters
