Kieran Shannon: Treasure Rory McIlroy, he’s a true sporting great
WINNER ALL RIGHT: Rory McIlroy celebrates with the FedEx Cup at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia. McIlroy is becoming the face and voice of global golf. Picture: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Although the place is freshest in our collective memory for the uplifting feats of our athletes there the other week and now the 50th anniversary of the darkest hour in Olympic history, a certain other athletics meet in Munich came to mind in recent days.
Twenty years ago the city’s Olympic Stadium also staged the European championships. Sonia O’Sullivan entered those championships as its reigning 5km and 10km champion as well as a silver Olympic medallist in the former event, but by now was 32 and only months back after a considerable layoff, having given birth to a second child.
As it turned out those championships turned out to be all about second as well. In the 10k she had to settle for silver behind Paula Radcliffe. Then on the Saturday she was pipped for gold in the 5k by a Spaniard called by Marta Dominguez.
I watched that race in a newspaper office where we had all converged around the TV and as we diffused to go back to our work, a colleague, albeit one who worked in another part of the house other than the sports section, made a withering comment about O’Sullivan’s temperament.
To ‘lose’ to Szabo in Sydney might have been unfortunate. To lose to Radcliffe, a perennial runner-up herself through the years, less so. And now to lose to an unknown like Dominguez? In that moment the double golds of Budapest and Marrakech were erased, the only relevant reference points the self-implosions of Atlanta and Athens. “She’s such a choker.”
It was watching Rory McIlroy’s final round on Sunday night from East Lake that triggered Munich 2002 to resurrect itself from our mental archives. There were a few moments – even up to his supposed approach shot to the 18th – that it looked like there was a chance he was going to let another one slip from his hands. But there was one constant, overriding thought during those three-plus hours of viewing: what an impressive player, sportsperson, man. Even if he doesn’t win this and even though he needs to win this.
Like Sonia, he’s had his spectacular collapses in Georgia and elsewhere with the whole world looking on, but if anything has become all the relatable and admirable and durable for the vulnerability and dips and slips.
And like with Cobh’s finest, any surname is superfluous in his case. In fact it operates at a different level of recognition, whatever about affection. Sonia was Sonia to this nation and her event, but not quite in the way a certain Ms Williams is Serena to one and all. Rory is Rory to everyone in world golf and the world of sport. Ronaldo knows who he is. LeBron James too. Not even Sonia enjoyed that level of global fame and peer respect.
Jonny Sexton and Brian O’Driscoll have at different times been the global face of their sport but that sport is a minority world sport. Golf, for all its exclusivity, has a significance and reach in America that not even we fully appreciate here.
Katie Taylor has not just been the face of women’s boxing but she’s put it on her shoulders, making her possibly the most important Irish sportsperson of this century and one of the most important in her sport, regardless of gender, because she made it open to all, regardless of gender. Roy Keane was once the face of the biggest club and the best team in the world of the world’s biggest sport but even for all his brilliance and recognition was never the face or voice of the sport itself.
McIlroy is becoming all those things: the face and voice of a major sport and becoming all the more comfortable with that elevation and level of recognition and responsibility. If a James has been the face and spokesperson for the NBA for the last 15 years, then McIlroy this year has become the PGA’s spokesperson, embracing taking on LIV and whatever course he rocks up at.
True, he’s still only the third-best ranked player in the world. And for sure he’s long overdue another major, something he acknowledged within seconds of being interviewed after his FedEx Cup victory by referencing St Andrew’s; like Sonia he should already have won more than he has.
But a bit like my old colleague in with the pride of Cork, we shouldn’t sniff at all the times he came second or was in the mix. Scorn not his consistency or continuous competitiveness, as inconsistent as he can be within a competition, a round, even a hole. With Sonia we knew we had something special, the best we’d had. But did we truly know or grasp or appreciate that she wasn’t merely the best we’d had but the best we ever would?
We took her for granted, summed up in that remark after that race in Munich.
We shouldn’t make the same mistake with Rory.
