GOLF: Rory McIlroy in familiar - and winning - territory at Quail Hollow

Few places on earth must feel more comfortable to Rory McIlroy than Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, N.C.

And with Scottie Scheffler taking the week off, the Northern Irishman is favored to win the Truist Championship for a record fifth time when the signature event field tees off Thursday.

"I really feel like this tournament ... got my career going, especially on the PGA Tour," McIlroy said this week. "Getting my first win on Tour in 2010. Then it's been a pretty fruitful place since then."

McIlroy prevailed at the tournament at Quail Hollow, previously called the Wells Fargo Championship and the Quail Hollow Championship, in 2010, 2015, 2021 and 2024. Sepp Straka is the defending champion this week, but the Austrian won the 2025 Truist at Philadelphia Cricket Club, a one-year relocation as Quail Hollow hosted the PGA Championship instead.

It's the final week before players head to Aronimink Golf Club for the PGA, and while Scheffler is preparing for the second major of the year at home, most of the rest of the top 10 in the world are in Charlotte. McIlroy is hungry to add to his six major titles after repeating as Masters champion earlier this spring.

"I've spoke about this a lot, I felt like winning the Grand Slam (in 2025) was like this -- was going to be this life-changing thing and in some ways it was, but in other ways I had to remember like, ‘No, I still have a lot of my career left and I want to keep playing and keep competing,'" McIlroy said.

"I'm excited for the road ahead. I'm excited for this week, I'm excited for Aronimink next week."

While McIlroy has shown top form this season, there may be no hotter players in the sport than the duo of Matt Fitzpatrick and Cameron Young.

Fitzpatrick has won three of his past four starts and two straight at the RBC Heritage and Zurich Classic of New Orleans, the latter a team event he played with his brother Alex. The Englishman could become the first player to win three PGA Tour starts in a row since Dustin Johnson in 2017.

Young won The Players Championship in March and doubled his win total for the year at last week's Cadillac Championship, also a signature event.

"For me at the moment, I think it's just trying to maintain the same approach each week," Young said, noting how he took three weeks off between The Players and the Masters. "... I feel like I just picked up where I left off after The Players in terms of mindset and physically I had had time to practice at home. I think it's a good thing to learn for me that, you know, I can take a couple weeks off and just come back and keep beating the same process."

Golfers are trading in Trump National Doral's "Blue Monster" for Quail Hollow's "Green Mile," a brutally challenging three-hole finish with two long par-4s and a precarious par-3 17th with water surrounding more than half the green.

"I think with the weather we had last year for the PGA the greens were a little bit softer, the rough was a little bit higher," Fitzpatrick said. "This week it's actually the opposite. The greens seem to be very, very firm and the rough's a little shorter, which is nice. Yeah, I'm really kind of shocked at how firm the greens are right now and that's definitely going to make it a great test."

Seventy-two golfers will play in the no-cut, $20 million event. If the winner is not already qualified for the PGA Championship, he will be added to next week's field.

-Field Level Media/Reuters