Rory Cites "Speed Training" For Recent Struggles: "I'm sort of fighting to get back out of that. That's what I'm frustrated with."

The sight of Pete Cowen watching Rory McIlroy no doubt generated plenty of Players range buzz.

But after McIlroy posted 79-75, the admission of struggles tied to his speed pursuit last fall should offer a cautionary tale. After round two at The Players:

Q. What are you most frustrated with?

RORY McILROY: Probably the swing issues and where it all stems from, probably like October last year, doing a little bit of speed training, started getting sucked into that stuff, swing got flat, long, and too rotational. Obviously I added some speed and am hitting the ball longer, but what that did to my swing as a whole probably wasn't a good thing, so I'm sort of fighting to get back out of that. That's what I'm frustrated with.

I felt like I made some good strides. I played well at TOUR Championship, played well at the U.S. Open. I sort of look back at Winged Foot and I look at my swing there, and I would be pretty happy with that again, and then after Winged Foot I had a few weeks before we went to the West Coast and I started to try to hit the ball a bit harder, hit a lot of drivers, get a bit more speed, and I felt like that was sort of the infancy of where these swing problems have come from. So it's just a matter of trying to get back out of it.

Hey, leave the West Coast out of this. We didn’t make you go all in on launch angle golf!

Sorry, go on…

Q. Not to play amateur psychologist, but you're obviously one of the longest players on the PGA TOUR. Why do you think you went down that route?

RORY McILROY: I think a lot of people did. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't anything to do with what Bryson did at the U.S. Open. I think a lot of people saw that and were like, whoa, if this is the way they're going to set golf courses up in the future, it helps. It really helps.

The one thing that people don't appreciate is how good Bryson is out of the rough. Not only because of how upright he is but because his short irons are longer than standard, so he can get a little more speed through the rough than us, than other guys. And I thought being able to get some more speed is a good thing, and I maybe just -- to the detriment a little bit of my swing, I got there, but I just need to maybe rein it back in a little bit.

Sounds like a good plan.