GOLF: Red Hot Rory

It took some of golf’s cogniscenti a while to digest the depth of Rory McIlroy’s quality. No one is doubting the torch has passed now. By Jim McCabe.

GIVEN the locale — America’s massive Sonoran Desert — and that he had just one week earlier been entrenched in the Middle East, there was reason to suggest that Andrew ‘Chubby’ Chandler was falling victim to that legendary optical phenomenon.

Clearly, he was seeing a mirage — or imagining one — because while discussing Rory McIlroy with a golf reporter he said, “When he becomes No. 1 in the world . . .”