Kieran Shannon: Rory McIlroy's game first astounded us, his grit has endeared him to us

Rory McIlroy has no rival now as the finest Irish sportsperson ever.

FATHER'S DAY: Masters champion Rory McIlroy celebrates with dad Gerry after going back to back at Augusta National.

He still may not make the winning easy but as for the competing and the contesting, he does. When neither is.

As Rory McIlroy trailed Cameron Young by two shots at one point on Sunday evening in Augusta, you probably didn’t realise that it wasn’t the first time he had blown a lead to a player by that first name in the final round of a major tournament.

Heading into the Sunday of the 2022 Open Championship at St Andrews, McIlroy and Viktor Hovland had held a four-stroke lead on the rest of the field led by Cameron Smith, a 28-year old from Australia with a particularly distinctive mullet buried under his cap.

Even as the tournament headed into the back nine McIlroy still enjoyed – though that’s hardly the right word – a three-shot lead over Smith, a struggling Hovland and an emerging Young.

And yet he still lost. Or, if you were to be cruel – or truthful about it – he still blew it. Although he didn’t have a single bogey that day, he didn’t make a single birdie in the last eight holes. Smith shot five, leaving him with two shots to spare over McIlroy and one over the promising Young. While McIlroy departed St Andrews in the back of a car crying into the shoulder of his wife Erica, Smith left with the Claret Jug.

Chances are though not only did you fail to make the link on Sunday night between Young and Smith sharing the same first name but you probably didn’t even remember the Kiwi’s last. Since he joined LIV Golf, it’s like we haven’t seen hind nor hair – even with that mullet – of him. In his last six appearances in a major, Smith hasn’t made the cut once. He’s now ranked 222nd in the world. A full 220 spots behind one Master – or make that Masters – McIlroy.

You likely still remember the name Brooks Koepka. But you may have forgotten what he said back in the summer of 2019 when he ascended to the world number one ranking. “I’ve been out here, what, five years? Rory hasn’t won a major since I’ve been on the tour. So I just don’t view it as a rivalry. I’m not looking in the rearview mirror.” 

Now it’s Koepka that can eat McIlroy’s dust. Since winning his fifth major at the 2023 US PGA Championship, he hasn’t cracked the top 10 in any of the subsequent 11. In three of last year’s majors he failed to make the cut. Although Rory would have been more moved to have joined his one-time idol Nick Faldo on six major championships at the weekend, a part of him must be privately chuckling at surpassing Koepka’s five.

If he has a contemporary rival now, it is Scottie Scheffler, certainly not a Koepka or a Spieth or a Smith, just as he has no rival now as the finest Irish sportsperson ever. Just as he started out before all of them, he has outlasted them all. Even though and when they were beating him and he was beating himself, he kept at it. Competing. Contesting. Believing.

It was his game that first astounded us but it is his grit that has endeared him to us.

On Sunday night in both the log cabin and on the ceremony by the 18th green, McIlroy emotionally made a point of acknowledging how his home club in Holywood and especially his parents cultivated and supported his “outlandish” dreams.

He could only touch on the nature of those aspirations and that support but an illuminating and marvellously-timed biography by the writer Alan Shipnuck delves into splendid detail just how exceptional they were.

We all know about The Gerry Kelly Show when he replicated Tiger chipping balls into washing machines. But what might be forgotten or overlooked is how instead of watching cartoons like Mickey Mouse, Rory would obsess over Faldo’s Masterclass on an old VHS tape. His parents not only converted part of the backyard into a putting green; they installed floodlights over it so he could practise – or for him, play – into the night.

To help him enter world U10 tournaments in Florida that Tiger Woods before him competed in and won, they’d work around the clock. Gerry would clean toilets and locker rooms in a local rugby club from 8am to noon before tending the bar at the golf club for six hours before then heading back to the rugby club to pull pints there for a further five hours. By the time he would get home, Rosie would head out to work the graveyard shift in a local factory, filing shipping crates with packing tape.

One particular gloriously sunny Sunday when a nine-year-old Rory wanted to go down to the range, Gerry had only enough money for one bucket of balls. Rory didn’t complain but his father knew he would have liked at least five so he got on his knees so they were eyeball to eyeball. “Son, I’ve worked hard, your mother has worked hard, but that is all we have left. I want you to hit every shot like winning the Open depends on it.” 

His resilience wasn’t just garnered from all those near-misses and heartbreaks on the finest and most devastating courses in the world; it was honed at home in Hollywood, the range, that putting green out the back.

The book reminds us of so many other people and obstacles – often one and the same thing – he’s encountered along this remarkable journey, from old putting coaches and swing coaches; caddies to managers; and even ladies; invariably you’ll wince at remembering how he broke it off with Holly and then Caroline and even temporarily Erica. It hasn’t been all perfect. He hasn’t been all perfect. But all along there was an essential decency, a remarkable thirst to get better, the retention of a dream and two parents who helped protect it.

Before the 2015 Masters he recalled playing there a few weeks earlier with his father. “I remember the sun going down on the first evening and we were walking up the 18th. It was so serene and peaceful. Sharing a moment and setting like that with my dad is something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.” Gerry didn’t get to play in Augusta last year. He didn’t even get to see his son winning it; himself and Rose were moving into a new house in the north.

But they were there last Sunday. They’ve always been there. What a journey, dream and life they’ve shared.