There's More Than a Title Defense at Stake for McIlroy Brain dead. Unconscious. Alien. These are perfect terms in a horror movie. They say something else entirely when they are used to describe one of the world's top golfers - especially when the golfer is saying such things about himself. So it goes for Rory McIlroy at the moment. "I've always said it's easier to smile when you're making birdies," said the two-time major champion, who, as he prepares to defend his P.G.A. Championship crown this week, a little short on both. McIlroy, 24, seemed on top of the world at Kiawah Island, crafting a command final-round performance to win by a record eight shots last year. He returned to No.1 in the world rankings, added two more victories in the FedEx Cup postseason and topped the money list on both sides of the Atlantic. The magic, though, seemed to dry up once the calendar turned. McIlroy is winless in 2013, as he has made an equipment switch that has paid him handsomely but so far failed to produce positive results. In 14 stroke-play events this year, McIlroy is a combined 12 over par. From mid-May through the British Open last month, he missed three of five cuts, with his highest finish 41st. He withdrew from the Honda Classic with a dubious toothache (and he then apologized the next day). He has not played a weekend round away from American soil. That's just the on-course news. There was also the nasty split with his management company, his second switch in as many years. Although he is still with the same high-profile girlfriend, the former tennis No.1 Caroline Wozniacki, that has come in for second-guessing as well. If he wasn't the defending champion, McIlroy might have shown up this week at Oak Hill Country Club, just outside Rochester, New York, as an afterthought. "Right now he's going through a tough time," said Curtis Strange, who won the second of back-to-back U.S. Opens in 1989 at Oak Hill. And when you go through a tough time, you also lose confidence. He added that "it's a vicious circle and we have all gone through it." It's worth noting that McIlroy went through a similar slump last summer, missing four of five cuts in a stretch that began with the Players Championship and carried through the U.S. Open. It wasn't until a week before the P.G.A. that he snapped out of it, tying for fifth at the Bridgestone Invitational. "I'm sitting up here a lot more positive," he said before teeing off last week for the 2013 Bridgestone. He went on to tie for 27th place. It was still better than how things went at the British Open at Muirfield, when an opening 79 left McIlroy looking helpless. He was brutally honest with reporters afterward. "It's just so brain dead," McIlroy lamented. Seriously, I feel like I've been walking around out there like that for the last couple of months. I'm trying to get out of it. I just don't quite know how. He then called his stupor "a very alien feeling - it's something I've never felt before." Much scrutiny centers on McIlroy's equipment change, part of a reported nine-figure deal with Nike that covers all 14 clubs. None of the sticks he used to win the P.G.A. or in the FedEx Cup series last year remain in his bag. McIlroy has spent much of the year in search of a trustworthy driver, like the old Titleist model he gave up in the switch. Nick Faldo took him to task, saying the 24-year-old hotshot had "messed with a winning formula." It has happened to others. After winning the FedEx Cup in 2010, Jim Furyk endured a miserable 2011 as he switched manufacturers. Nearly two decades ago, Corey Pavin went from U.S. Open champion to nearly falling off the map. Paul Azinger, who won the 1993 P.G.A. at Inverness, went through similar struggles and feels for McIlroy. "It's almost like he's had a divorce with 14 clubs," he said. Likewise, the BBC's Peter Alliss suggested that McIlroy's problems have less to do with mechanics and more with psychological upheaval. "It's entirely what's going on in his head, and that breaks into your confidence," Alliss said during the British Open. It's a cumulative effect of changing management, changing his clubs, having a new girlfriend and changing his way of life. It's a lot to take on board when you are only 24 years of age. That jet-set romance of two world-class athletes also has come under scrutiny. Early in their courtship, both McIlroy and Wozniacki topped the world rankings in their sports. Now he is No.3 and she has slipped to No.10. That led the veteran golfer Gary Player to wonder aloud last week whether practice time was being shortchanged in the process. "Love is still the greatest thing that ever happens in our lives," Player, who in January celebrated 56 years of marriage to his wife, Vivienne, told Sport UK. "But the thing is for a man like Rory, with talent galore," he added, "he's got to make sure he has a woman like I've got - who has been married for 56 years, who has only encouraged me to do well and made sacrifices." It was a day or two before the comments got back to McIlroy, who nimbly sidestepped any rift with the 77-year-old Hall of Famer. "I have the utmost respect for Gary Player," McIlroy said. He is an incredible man. This is the first time I've heard it. All I know is I've got a lot of respect for the man, and he's someone that I definitely look up to. Now if McIlroy can just find a way to get around Oak Hill with similar dexterity.