Pinehurst #2 will next week play host to the 114th US Open, and is the longest track to hold the Open since Congressional Country Club in 2011, although it will bear the noticeable deficiency of an ankle deep, wrist-wrecking rough.
"It's going to be different. I think some guys are going to be surprised by the look of the golf course from what it was in '05 and '99 [when it previously hosted the US Open]," said McIlroy.
"I love what they've done with the native areas and taken the long rough away, which is what we expect at a US Open."
Having held the championship in 1999 and 2005, the course - although markedly different this year - conceded winning scores of only one-under and even-par respectively, so there's little doubt it should provide another stern test come the first round next Thursday.
"It's obviously a really strong golf course," said McIlroy. "It tests all aspects of your game."
"The greens are its defence with all the runoffs. I think here, more than anywhere else, play to the middle of the green. If you have putts from the middle of the green all day you're really not going to get into much trouble at all."
But the difficulty will ultimately lie in finding the centres of the green complexes in the first place.
Even with no rough this year, sandy waste areas with wire grass will see players having to make good decisions when they miss the fairway and perhaps find a questionable lie.
"It's going to play much differently because when you hit it in the rough in previous US Opens you only had one option, which was to hack it back out onto the fairway and go from there, whereas here if you hit it into these native areas you might have a shot or you might not. It's sort of 50-50," he said.
It's this chance aspect of the setup that has newly crowned world number one Adam Scott excited about playing in the Open next week.
"I like the fact that you can get a good break and get a nice clean lie or you might get a little unlucky and have to pitch back out," said Scott.
Indeed, the lack of juicy rough is an oddity for this year's setup, as are the unusually wide fairways.
According to McIlroy - who saw the course for the first time this week - it entices players to hit driver.
Driver is certainly the play on many of the holes, with four 500-yard-plus par fours meaning if you're being conservative off the tee, you'll be hitting long clubs into upside-down saucer greens all day.
"Whenever anyone talks about Pinehurst #2 they talk about the greens and how everything falls off and upturned saucers - and it's true. The greens are a lot different to the greens you get in most places."
America's Phil Mickelson agrees with McIlroy, and said after his practice session around Pinehurst, that the greens will pose an almighty challenge.
"Around the greens so much skill and touch is involved with your short game to salvage shots, as opposed to the 'hit and hope' out of the big heavy rough," said Mickelson.
"The greens are so penalising that if you're not in the fairway, getting the ball on the surface is almost impossible."
Where the USGA have lost one set of teeth, they gain another, and much like 2010 where Pebble Beach's rough wasn't as severe, it was the greens that proved to be the wildcard that week.
If Pinehurst's greens are as firm and fast as Pebble's were four years ago, then we may see some significant greenside meltdowns.
Such meltdowns however will probably be based more on the inability to exact great touch around the greens, rather than in previous years where they'd be doing their best not to snap a wrist while extricating themselves from knee deep rough.
That's certainly a good thing for everyone, and won't detract from the spectacle.