Rory: The unheralded team behind a sporting superstar
GERRY McILROY didn’t know it but his every movement during last Sunday’s final round of the US Open was subject to the closest scrutiny. Not quite the FBI or the CIA but an institution of almost similar renown in the United States, The New York Times, who deemed it worthy to dispatch a reporter to see how Gerry was coping with watching his 22-year-old son, Rory, try to retain his commanding lead at the head of the field in one of golf’s four major championships.
“Teetering on his footsteps behind fans eight feet deep, Gerry McIlroy stood along the 6th fairway and could not see a thing”, reported the Times. “He had no clue which golfers were hitting the shots. No sign of where the balls were landing and no matter how much he craned his neck, he could not see a glimpse of his son, the young genius about to give his dad the greatest gift on Father’s Day, a US Open title won in historic fashion.”
When the Times man caught up with Gerry, all he would allow was that “it would be special if he won today of all days, wouldn’t it?”
The surveillance didn’t end there. Gerry McIlroy, we are told, “walked the course unrecognised, just a white haired, balding Irishman blending into thousands of fans, wearing a lime green polo shirt and dark Madras shorts and without a radio, periscope or portable TV. He could only squeeze in a glance of his son, shimmying up to the ropes of several holes whenever he could but hanging back on most. After raucous cheers broke out on one hole, he asked a fan next to him, ‘do you know who just putted?’ He remained unfazed when spectators yelled ‘I love you Rory’ and did not flinch when others pushed him aside.”
Apparently, there were giveaway signs that Gerry wasn’t as much in control of his emotions as might at first appeared to be the case. Wrote the NY Times: “On the 6th, he took a long drag on his cigarette after one of Rory’s shots came within a foot of flopping into the water. On the 7th, while straining to see the green, he chewed the fingers on his left hand. On the 8th, he chewed his gum in a rush as if trying to break a record for chomping per minute.”
Five days later, my efforts to find out just how Gerry McIlroy was feeling, now that the trophy was safely in the bag and all the hullabaloo was dying down, met with a polite “not right now”. Stuart Cage of Rory’s International Sports Management (ISM) and his player manager, indicated that Gerry wouldn’t be talking to the media and left it at that. Dad’s reaction to what his son had achieved was typical of the man — a desire to stay in the background and ensure that he wasn’t taking any of the credit for what Rory had achieved.
And yet, few would have blamed Gerry had he claimed some of the limelight. All week, we have heard about the sacrifices made by his wife Rosie and himself to give Rory every conceivable opportunity to realise his potential from as early as four years of age. Both did two and even three jobs per day to make ends meet and it can’t have been easy.
However, the rewards are now quite enormous and set to grow ever greater as the years go by. Quite simply, Rory McIlroy is one of the hottest properties in all of sport, already a multimillionaire with most of the trappings of wealth and lots more still to come.
Gerry McIlroy will quietly tell you of how good Rory has been to himself and Rosie and he must have been bursting with pride on Sunday night when the new champion told the world at the presentation that “this one is for you dad — wherever you are.” For me, those last three words said a whole lot — another indication that Gerry was happy to stay in the background and allow Rory to take the plaudits.
Of course, they embraced once the final putt was in the hole and the closeness between them cannot be overstated. I have been in their company from time to time and watched on other occasions and realised that they are as much best friends as father and son. Off the golf course, they spent much of US Open week together, dining in the evening with members of the ISM management team and another of their leading clients, Lee Westwood. Each morning, they breakfasted at the same table, the last words from Gerry on Sunday being a very simple but positive “you played great the last three days, why is it going to be any different today?”
Indeed. But true to form, once Rory’s courtesy Lexus arrived at the clubhouse, Gerry was out the back door like a flash and had disappeared into the crowd before the cameras hardly had time to click into action. Again, it was a case of letting the young man do his own thing, he had earned that right beyond any doubt.
Afterwards McIlroy also name-checked Dave Stockton Sr, the putting guru who helped McIlroy change his approach to putting.
Stockton told the Belfast Telegraph it took more time to eat lunch that it did to get the right ideas through to an ace student.
“Basically I met with Rory, watched him putting and it took about 10 minutes to fix,” said the Californian. “I told him ‘you’re a great ball player and your putting is great’.
“We just needed to work on the mental side of things. It was just a case of getting him into a rhythm. Rory plays through instinct and feel and that’s what’s great about him. He just needed to line up the ball, look at the hole and the positioning of his feet and follow through on the putt and keep the back of his left hand going towards the target. His mechanics were flawless, but he had to stop concentrating on technique and play what was in front of him.”
And then there’s the part played by his caddie JP Fitzgerald, who came in for a deal of criticism after his boss’s meltdown in the final round of the Masters. Whether it was well founded or not is open to question. For instance, did Fitzgerald advise against playing a driver off the 10th tee, the shot that led to the end of the road where the green jacket was concerned? There were other examples, too, where people felt a caddie of his experience might have intervened.
The chances are we will never know the full story. McIlroy is unlikely to reveal the full facts, Fitzgerald can be taciturn when it suits him and this is almost certainly one such issue. Asked about JP’s role at Congressional, Rory seemed to take some of the blame for Augusta by admitting that “I didn’t speak to JP enough over that last day. It’s not even about golf, having a conversation about something completely different is probably best for me because it takes my mind off it. That was a huge thing I learned at Augusta. I need to have conversations with him walking down the fairways and it seemed to work out for me this week.”
A close friendship has developed between McIlroy and Fitzgerald and their ease in each other’s company and their comfort in the situation they found themselves in on Sunday was best exemplified at the 10th tee. The broad smiles and the resounding high five that greeted the tee shot at this treacherous par three that finished inches from the hole and more or less clinched Rory’s first of many majors, told their own story.
As ISM boss Chubby Chandler commented late last year: “JP might not be a great caddie but he’s the best for Rory.”
The young hero is not one to sing about his achievements from the rooftops. Much the same applies to Gerry McIlroy and JP Fitzgerald, the two men who spend most time with him during tournament week. For sure, they make for an impressive trio.
How McIlroy and his management team navigate the hurdles of the next few months will be critical.
“We’ve got a responsibility to make sure he keeps loving the game and that he don’t burn out,” Chandler added. “I’ve never handled anybody like him. But we’ve seen people burn out. We’re not going to let that happen with him.”
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