Rory McIlroy's Major drought is one of the most-talked about subjects in golf - especially in the build-up to and duration of all four of the biggest championships in the men's game.
Threatening to become a golfing powerhouse who overhauled even the great Jack Nicklaus' collection of Majors early in his career, McIlroy won four in the space of 15 starts between 2011 and 2014 before stumbling on several occasions since. There was also arguably the most famous missed opportunity of all at the 2011 Masters in which he threw away a four-stroke lead on Sunday.
Stuck on four as several of his rivals began their own respective hauls - Brooks Koepka even passing him - McIlroy has found it incredibly difficult to remove the Major monkey from his back.
The World No.3's next Major start after lifting the 2014 PGA Championship at Valhalla - which was then the final one of the season - arrived the following April at The Masters, kicking off a run of successive top-10s. He finished solo fourth and ended T10, T7, and T5 in the following campaigns. Despite teeing off alongside champion Patrick Reed in the final group during 2018, McIlroy ended up fading away via a 74 as the American landed his only Major to date.
McIlroy's 2015 US Open featured a respectable T9 result, but that was then followed by three consecutive missed cuts at the USGA-led championship. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Northern Irishman ended T5, T4, and T2 at the Open Championship between 2016 and 2018, all without being able to land a glove on the eventual winner.
Over the course of the next five-and-a-half seasons, McIlroy produced 12 top-10s - with 2022 seeing high finishes at all four Majors - and has been runner-up on two separate occasions. Since the end of 2014, his top-10 count stands at 20.
The first of those silver-medal results arrived at the 2022 Masters when McIlroy was able to card a bogey-free 64 - capped by a chip-in on the last out of a bunker - on Sunday which catapulted him up into solo second behind Scottie Scheffler. The second was far more agonizing, failing to reel Wyndham Clark in at the 2023 US Open and eventually missing out on a playoff by just one stroke despite being in contention almost the entire way.
Just months prior, arguably the most difficult miss of the lot had arrived. Having co-led the 150th Open Championship at St Andrew by four shots alongside Viktor Hovland going into Sunday, McIlroy was powerless to prevent third-place Cameron Smith from roaring past him and hoisting the Claret Jug aloft.
Afterwards, the man who eventually finished third said: "I'll be OK. It's not life or death. I'll have other chances to win the Open Championship and other chances to win majors. It's one that I feel like I let slip away, but there will be other opportunities. The putter just went a little cold. I just couldn't find the shots."
The stats would suggest that McIlroy's next Major - if it does happen - will occur at the US Open. It's a championship that the 35-year-old has really grown to love in recent seasons, improving on his result every year since 2019. He has gone T9 (2019), T8 (2020), T7 (2021), T5 (2022), and 2 (2023). It does not take a genius to work out what the final number in that pattern should be.
Discussing his relationship with US Opens over the years following a bogey-free first-round 65 which put him joint top alongside Patrick Cantlay in 2024, McIlroy said: "I really don't think I embraced U.S. Open setups probably 10 years into my U.S. Open career.
"Played my first one in '09, and I think I really changed my mindset around them in 2019, that one in Pebble, and then since then I've -- I've also started to enjoy this style of golf a lot more."
Meanwhile, earlier in the week, McIlroy stated he felt he is "as close as I've ever been" to landing Major number five.
He said: "I've been on a pretty good run of US Open performances over the last few years. Obviously had a close call at LACC last year, Wyndham just pipping me to the post there.
"But I feel like I really struggled at US Open setups, 2016, '17, '18 in particular. I sort of had a bit of a I guess come-to-Jesus moment after that, tried to really figure out why that was. Then my performances from 2019 and after that have been really, really good.
"I'm really proud of my body of work over the past 15 years and everything that I have achieved, whether it be season-long titles or individual tournaments or majors. Obviously getting my hands on a fifth major has taken quite a while, but I'm more confident than ever that I'm right there, that I'm as close as I've ever been."
Below is every one of McIlroy's Major results since his last blue-chip victory in 2014.
