I wasn’t aware of this development until The Welshman sent me a message about it yesterday, but my response to him was, “it was only a matter of time, the way he twists his lower back…”

That development was a long-expected one for me, because even while Rory McIlroy has at times embraced the notion of not nailing his leading foot down on the back pivot, he has always insisted on twisting his lower back like a pretzel, and that was never going to end well, unfortunately.

The news is not particularly encouraging, either, as the CBS Sports article by Robby Kalland reports about Rory’s back injury:

Rory McIlroy withdrew from the 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational just before the start of his third round on Saturday. McIlroy, who shot a 4-under 68 on Friday to move himself into the top 10 of the leaderboard, cited a back injury as the reason for his departure.

That’s bad enough, but not the worrying part that caught my attention when I read further:

After arriving at the course for his preround warmup on Saturday, McIlroy felt discomfort in his back while trying to loosen up on the range. He withdrew about half an hour before his 12:55 p.m. ET tee time.

“While warming up in the gym this morning, I felt a small twinge in my back,” McIlroy said in a statement. “As I started hitting balls on the range before the round, it worsened and developed into muscle spasms in my lower back.

Lower back spasms are not good.  This was what led to Tiger Woods’ first of many surgeries on his back, and the underlying cause there was a herniated disc.

Let’s hope that this isn’t the case for Rory, as it’s not the first time he’s had back issues (this  post about another incident is from August ’23), but lower back spasms in a Modern Golf Swinger are an ominous sign of potentially career-threatening injury to the spine.

And this:

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… is a position at the top of the back swing that I absolutely hate to see.

So, as I just in the post title, Rory hasn’t yet turned 37 yet, making him yet another modern golfer to develop a back issue in his 30’s, where the Classic Golf Swing era greats all played entire careers without ever developing back issues.

Now, let me show you all a person with a back back, at ten years older than Rory is (I was 46 at the time), slamming a drive over 300 yards even while I could barely bend over to tie my shoes that same morning due to a lower back injury I suffered a couple of days beforehand:

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This was back in March of 2016 and, before flying out to Arizona for a WAX Golf Summit in Goodyear with DKondo, Jerry “BT” Crowell and others, I had hurt my lower back (I have scoliosis so an awkward move in the wrong direction is always an injury risk).

I was forced to sit in a plane for 5 hours on a flight to Phoenix just a couple of days later, and was so stiff and sore upon arrival, I had very limited range of movement.

There was a Summit planned however, and the show must go on.  At DKondo’s place, I took some tentative swings with his clubs and discovered to my amazement that the lower back injury had no effect upon my pivot and down swing.

I couldn’t tee up a ball (someone else helped with that), but I was able to talk about the mechanically-correct golf swing action and during a lunch break, that was me above driving balls from the back tier towards the main driving range deck in front of the clubhouse.

You do not have to twist your lower back to swing a golf club – that is the message here.  A full hip turn allowing the leading heel to lift is all the turning action you need.

In fact, if you use the Ben Hogan-style “Perfect Pivot” action that I’ll be explaining in my upcoming video, you don’t even need much if any leading heel lift – the key is getting that full and free hip turn to power the down swing:

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You generate more than enough power with a proper pivot, as I demonstrated reaching 187 mph ball speed with a drive using this very same action, and with a range ball, no less:

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That was in 2017, so I was 47 years old at the time – around the time of my “E = MCS” golf swing video release, and I had been hitting balls for over an hour before I even began to get speed readings with the SSR.

That’s a 47 year old, out of shape bloke hitting speeds approaching 190 mph in ball speed after a session, and I didn’t hit balls more than 3 or 4 times per week at the time.

Here I am at 52 years young, driving the ball 330 yards without a care in the world except for how good a cold beer was going to taste later:

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You’ll notice as well that the SC300i Swing Caddie launch monitor (which cost me over $400) was shorting me about 10% on my distances, which I confirmed using different targets and a laser range finder – one of the worst golf equipment purchases I’ve made, and yes, I still gripe about it.

Back to Rory.

There is no way on this planet that a fitness freak like Rory McIlroy should be injuring his back swinging a golf club in his 30s.

Nor in his 40’s, 50s or 60s, for that matter.