Rory taking Clarke’s blunt advice on board
Tiger Woods is struggling, Phil Mickelson has medical issues and Lee Westwood is at home nursing a calf injury. It is enough to make a 21-year-old golfer with the world at his feet think he has never had a better chance to win his first major than at Whistling Straits.
The last major of the year starts today, and if Graeme McDowell and Louis Oosthuizen can do it, then why not McIlroy, patience permitting.
“Seeing the likes of Graeme and Louis win gives me a lot of confidence that I can go ahead and get one of these,” world number eight McIlroy said. “So I suppose it’s something to do with that and opening at St Andrews so well and finishing third, it wasn’t the result I wanted.
“But I’ll have plenty more chances to win them and I just have to be very, very patient because if there’s been anything in the past two or three years since I’ve been a pro that I have struggled with it’s been to just accept and be patient and I suppose curb my enthusiasm a bit and just let it happen.”
McIlroy admitted that was an ongoing battle, adding: “I think at this age it should be a struggle to curb it because everything’s still new to me and I want to really cement my place as one of the best players in the world.
“There’s been glimpses of it this year, at Quail Hollow and St Andrews, where I’ve really lived up to my own expectations and it’s just a matter of putting four good rounds together on a week like this. It would be great to win a major soon but I’m still trying to play it down a bit.
“I feel as if my game’s in great shape and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t think I can go out there and win.”
A tie for third at Hazeltine last August made for an impressive PGA debut and he won his maiden PGA Tour title at Quail Hollow this June, followed by a major championship record-tying nine-under 63 in the opening round of The Open in July, only for a second-round 80 to derail him.
McIlroy recovered sufficiently to tie for third place behind Oosthuizen but left St Andrews frustrated and that continued at the 3 Irish Open two weeks later. Luckily he had the older, wiser, Clarke as his playing partner.
“It was funny, I played with him in the first two rounds of the Irish Open and I shot seven under the first two days and was playing quite nicely. I shook his hand after we played on Friday and he said to me: ‘Be patient, you muppet’.
“He could obviously see I was getting a little bit upset because I felt the first two days at Killarney I could have got to 11 or 12 under par and be leading it.
“So it was just ‘calm down, you’re fine’ and ‘patience, you muppet’. I said ‘would you practice what you preach?’.
Clarke, though, is doing just that, happy with life following the dark days that followed his wife Heather’s death from breast cancer four years ago. Now 42, he is finalising a move back to Ireland with his two sons after a decade in London.
“I am allegedly older and allegedly wiser,” Clarke said after a lengthy session on the putting green at Whistling Straits. “We all get some rough cards dealt to us now and then and you just do as well as you can, and that’s the way it is.”
Which also makes for a happy golfer, Clarke tying for second at the Scottish Open and joint-12th at Killarney.
“Things have turned the corner a little bit for me and I’m hitting the ball a lot better and I’m enjoying it an awful lot. I’m really keen and eager and I want to go out and play.”
Despite being called a muppet, McIlroy is pleased about Clarke’s new-found happiness.
“We were talking about it this morning on the way up in the car and it seems this is the happiest he’s been in a long time. He’s really looking forward to gettng back home, he’s got a really lovely girlfriend in Alison and he’s enjoying time with her and the kids are looking forward to getting back to Northern Ireland as well.
“He’s in a good place at the minute.”
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