Rory McIlroy aiming 'to be most successful European of all time'

Rory McIlroy is keen to continue building towards his goal of becoming Europe's greatest ever golfer at this week's Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship.

The Northern Irishman can draw level with the great Seve Ballesteros by securing a sixth Race to Dubai crown this week should he finish in the top two.

Even if McIlroy does not guarantee his place at the top of the Race to Dubai Rankings in Partnership with Rolex with a week to spare, he is already assured of heading to the DP World Tour Championship in pole position to win the season-long battle.

McIlroy said: “I pride myself - I'm a European player - I would like to go down as the most successful European of all time.

“Obviously Race to Dubai wins would count to that but also Major Championships and hopefully I've got a few more Ryder Cups ahead of me as well.

“So that's something that I would like to, I think that is a goal that's quite attainable over the next ten years.

“I'm very proud to be from Europe and have played on this Tour and played on this Tour consistently.

“It's something that I'm very proud of and I just think of the greats of European golf that I grew up watching, whether it was (Sir Nick) Faldo or Woosie (Ian Woosnam) or (Bernhard) Langer or just the real heyday of The European Tour in the '90s, I guess.

“I remember when I got my - not even my European Tour card - I remember when I got my first money clip just when I signed up to be a member and that was a really proud moment for me. That's something that I've always been proud of and something I want to continue to do.”

A sixth Race to Dubai title would leave only Colin Montgomerie, with eight, ahead of McIlroy, while only Harry Vardon (seven), Faldo (six) and Ballesteros, James Braid and John Henry Taylor (five each) can better McIlroy from a European perspective in terms of Major victories. McIlroy is already the most successful European in US PGA TOUR history with 26 wins to date.

However, despite his remarkable list of career achievements, the World Number Three has been busy working on improving his swing since his last outing at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.

“I had four weeks off, but I was keeping pretty busy in those four weeks,” he added.

“I've done some work on my swing that I felt like I needed to do. Still probably a way to go but it will be nice to test it out in competition and see how it holds up.

“I sort of committed after the Dunhill that I wasn't going to watch my ball flight for three weeks. So locked myself indoors in a swing studio for three weeks and just hit balls into a blank screen or net and just focused on my swing and focused on the movement of my swing and focused on movement of my body patterns.

“Then over the past ten days now, started to see the ball flight and get a bit more comfortable with what the ball was doing in the air. Still trying to focus on the move that I want to make.

“But I think those three weeks were important. I had not had time to do that over the past 18 months. So I thought it was important to get in there and do that.

“And for me that's the only way that I'm going to make a swing change. Because if I just hit balls on the range, I'm just going to react to whatever ball flight I've just seen.

“So to not see the ball flight for a while I think has been really important to try to implement some of those little changes, and it's definitely something that I'll continue to do after these two weeks into December and going into the new year as well.

“It's a work-in-progress. For me, it's something just to make my golf swing more efficient, and then if it is more efficient, then it means it's not going to break down as much under pressure. If I look at my year, the one thing that I would criticise myself on is the fact that I've had these chances to win.

“But then when I've had these chances to win, okay, some may have been because of the putter but others have been because of my ball-striking letting me down as a crucial point. I think just trying to clean all that up so that whenever I do get under that pressure, I can have a hundred per cent trust in my swing and know what's going to happen.”