Making friends on both sides of the pond — even as a 10-year old

IT was not just in this part of the world that Rory McIlroy’s US Open progress was being monitored extremely closely last night.

For the Pinckney family of Orem, Utah, McIlroy’s elevation to the status of a major winner brought about the culmination of a 13-year bond between the two golfing families and even took the young Irishman to the US for a summer.

Added to the interest was the fact that their son, Scott Pinckney, was also playing Congressional this week.

The friendship stretches back to when the boys were 9 and playing at the Doral-Publix Junior event in Miami, Florida, in 1998. First, the young golfers got on like a house on fire, then the respective families struck an instant chord with each other and the tournament was kind to them too, McIlroy winning the Under-10 division and Pinckney coming second.

“My family went to Doral and Rory’s family went,” Pinckney said.

“We met and we just hit it off. Everyone had a great time.

“His family wanted him to come over and play golf in the States and we developed such a relationship there that they shipped him over.”

That was in the summer of 2000, with McIlroy staying with the Pinckney family for three months at their home in Orem, playing junior golf tournaments with Pinckney and watching Tiger Woods tear up Pebble Beach to win the US Open by a record 15 strokes.

“He spent the whole summer with us and we had an awesome time,” Pinckney said. “Ever since then, we have had a great relationship. The first day he was there we went to the pool and he got so sunburned. He got sun sick, sun blistered. He was puking during the night.

“My mom called his parents. It was like, ‘We’re taking real good care of him. He’s sick. He didn’t put on any sunscreen’.”

Alas, the two youths would not meet for another nine years, although they kept in touch.

By 2009, Pinckney was making a success of collegiate golf at Arizona State University, and McIlroy was making such a firm impression on the professional game that he qualified for the World Golf Championship-Accenture Match Play in Tucson.

Pinckney drove down from his campus to spend some time with McIlroy and they stayed in touch, but an email mix-up stopped the contact again — until the amateur came through his sectional qualifier at Glendale, California, for this year’s US Open.

Pinckney, who is two months older than McIlroy, enjoyed his friend’s success as much as being in his first major, even though he missed the cut.

“He hasn’t changed,” Pinckney said after they played nine practice holes together on Wednesday. “He’s comp-letely down to earth. It was like nothing had changed, like we were best of friends. It’s unbelievable. He has such a great attitude where he’s only going to keep improving. His ball-striking is unbelievable. His attitude and perseverance shows he’s only learned from what happened at the Masters.

“He has such a great attitude and he just oozes out confidence. It’s awesome to see.”