Why it's time for some to see the Rory show a little differently
The centre of attention: Rory McIlroy tees off on the 16th hole as Justin Thomas, center, and Tony Finau, left, look on during the final round of the Canadian Open golf tournament in Toronto on Sunday. Pic: Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP
What do we see when we see Rory?
A summer’s day is as good a time as any to ask the question. The week of a Major championship? Better again. After the week that was, when the sport of golf inexplicably tore itself apart at the seams? Starting to feel like a question that be asked.
In a wonderful piece tracking Tiger Woods during his second round at the PGA Championship at Southern Hills last month, ESPN writer Kevin Van Valkenburg followed galleries thronging to watch the game’s icon limp and grind and grit his way around and described Woods as “the most accurate Rorschach test we have”.
But what of the Rors-chach test? What do we see?
For eight years now, on weeks like these, an Irish audience has seen someone falling short, short of an expectation that could never have been met, even if it indeed never been met.
In that blurringly brilliant spell between 2011 and 2014, McIlroy fulfilled the prophecies and promises and claimed four Majors in three years. Somewhere in there, we went ahead and assumed that he’d made a fresh promise — it would always be like this. But he hadn’t promised us anything...anything but himself.
When McIlroy most recently fell short, at Southern Hills where his blistering opening round was never built upon and he finished in eighth to go with a second place at Augusta, it was Shane Lowry who tried to remind us.
"The armchair golfers don't realise how hard it is out here,” said Lowry. “I saw a quote from [Rory]…on how he hasn't won a major since 2014 but he has pretty much done everything else you have to do in the world of golf. People expected him to win 10 majors when he won those four and it just hasn't worked out like that.”
It is hard out here. Spending a week inside the ropes with McIlroy at the Canadian Open in Toronto reinforced just how hard it is. Here, in this country and city that has adopted him in a way few if any have, showering him with noise and love and wonder, it was still bloody hard.
McIlroy has indeed done pretty much everything there is to do in golf — apart from defending a title on the PGA Tour. This week, of all weeks, offered him a fresh chance…
What do they see when they see Rory? are the swarming mass of humanity that makes up a PGA Tour event. The officials, the fellow pros, the sponsors and corporate hangers-on, the agents, the coaches, the media, the marshals and volunteers and then the fans.
They see the main attraction, the champion, the (adopted) local favourite, the wise counsel, the noble statesman, the peacekeeper and peacemaker, the self-effacing, approachable son-in-law whose words as much as actions must help the sport out of its existential crisis. Not by his own choice, McIlroy is all things to all of these people all of the time.
A Pro-Am is that suggestion you see every four years that each Olympic event have a normal person compete for context come to life. McIlroy and four normal people set off early and don’t get very far. On the first hole, McIlroy dodges their second and third shots spraying left and right as he walks to where his first landed. “You scared me a little bit,” he jokes as one of his partners pokes an iron from one side of the rough to the other over his head.
The crowds are much smaller than what’s to come, more intimate too. Leaving the fifth green, a father apologetically asks McIlroy for a photo with his son, donned in a Liverpool shirt: “Sorry, I know you’re a Manchester United fan.” “That’s okay,” McIlroy deadpans. “I’d rather be a Liverpool fan at the minute, trust me.”
United’s league title famine stretches back to the summer of 2013, just a year more than McIlroy’s Major itch but one of them has got much closer to a return to such glories in the intervening time.
On almost every green McIlroy hangs back and tests angles and inclines. Sometimes putting, sometimes just rolling balls along. A truth in all of those intervening years since 2014 is that if he isn’t going well on the greens, he isn’t going well at all. He wants the putter firing for Brookline.
By early afternoon he’s finished but just getting started. Goings on across the Atlantic, where the mutual desperation of Greg Norman and Saudi Arabia have met to bring golf to a crisis point of greed and morality, dictate as much. McIlroy sits in at the top table in the media centre and doesn’t shirk a question.
He argues that decisions made purely for financial reasons don’t end well and admits regrets over decisions he’s made himself. He may be implying financial, he may be implying political. The round he played with Donald Trump in 2017 wasn’t in the same stratosphere as the boot-licking sports washing Mickelson, McDowell and co. are engaging in. But it was foolish then and now.
Lessons learned likely steel him to tackle the pressing political questions head on. So too the passing of years. Experience brings maturity brings authority. All of these McIlroy things demand all of these McIlroy qualities. It's going to be that kinda week.
There’s a dank drizzle and a dew in the verdant suburban corner that makes up St. George’s Golf and Country Club as the 7.13am grouping duck through a gap in the fence off Islington Avenue. Justin Thomas, who won when McIlroy didn’t at Southern Hills, is alongside him as is home hope Corey Connors. In another time Connors could be called a home favourite. But there’s only one favourite here this week.
McIlroy spends the morning getting back to being a golfer and clearly enjoys it. The moisture on the ground and in the skies soaks socks that will dry again in the promise of the day to come. He and Thomas stroll down the ninth, their first, discussing travel plans for Boston, where the US Open will be played. This nomadic life. The weekly churn, laying your head somewhere ultra comfortable but unfamiliar too. This is all part of the challenges that make up being McIlroy in 2022. He'd spent some of Wednesday's press conference as the doting dad, saying victory this week may lead to his daughter Poppy asking to go to the aquarium again but not a whole lot more.
The crowds are Thursday crowds, discerning and engaged like a Tuesday crowd at the Galway Races. They're polite too. As are the greens. The putter is not yet singing but clearing its throat and McIlroy shoots a 66 to charge near the head of the field. He comes back in and is again confronted with LIV Golf and all of its excesses. Capitalism is no stranger on the PGA Tou either but of all weeks, money seems the least of his concerns. He praises the PGA Tour decision to ban the LIV rebels and pokes fun at their ridiculous team names.
“He’s the Irish guy, well, Northern Irish … He’s in great shape … He used to be pudgy but he’s bulked up … He’s cute.”
Graeme McDowell and his outdoor accent don’t have exclusive rights to inane golf talk. There’s plenty to go around. But the sound that nearly two decades later remains the same around McIlroy is the exhaled wonder. It’s less than a half second long and is hard to catch as the 'bababooey' and 'get in the hole' nonsense follows rapidly. But it's still there.
It rushes out of mouths to fill the silence when a McIlroy ball has been obliterated off a tee. I first covered McIlroy when he won the West of Ireland as a 16-year-old. The exhaled wonder of the Toronto masses of 2022 is identical to that of the lucky few who still get to say they were there in Rosses Point in 2005.
It’s sunny and beery and cheery. A summer Friday in a city that spends five months of the year sub-zero and just coping. The locals are stretching vocal chords and lungs for the weekend cacophony to come. The card again has two bogeys but just four birdies. He fires drives 380 yards down the pipes then messes up a couple of wedges from 90 yards. The shorter irons hadn't felt great in his hands for a while but things have been improving since Augusta. He’s in the mix.
Harry Diamond is expecting. More accurately, his wife is. So former Ulster rugby player Niall O’Connor is on the bag. McIlroy appears to be using this as an opportunity to do more of his own calculus and the sums are working.
From the rough on the right of the par-five ninth he does his maths and asks O’Connor for a five iron, opens the face and goes down the grip. It’s a breathtakingly skillful shot. The kind of one the Wednesday mortals, or any others for that matter, don't dream of. Because they can't. But they can appreciate it when he does it. “One of the best I’ve hit all year,” he says.
The crowds are enormous and after their Open was cancelled in 2020 and 2021, Canadians are making the most of it and the most of him. Their reigning champion. The adulation is genuinely startling. With Tony Finau blistering to the front of the field, McIlroy gives chase and the galleries are in raptures. But the inane remain too.
"LIV Golf, we know you're gonna go Rory," someone shouts as he walks to the 10th tee box. No reaction. None needed. The talking is happening out there in the distance that he's about to pierce with a booming drive on the reachable par-four.
It's loud and stays so. The par-three 16th has been renamed The Rink, an ice hockey-shaped tee box and stadium seating with marshals decked out in hockey referee uniforms. McIlroy and playing partner Keith Mitchell are still dealing with errant seconds around the 15th green as a rumbling chant roars down from the 16th.
“We want Rory.”
Marshals at the 15th call for silence but it’s not that kinda day. Not that kinda week.
“The Rory show,” says Dan, one of the unsuccessful silence-callers.
Sure. But why? Why here and why like this?
“He’s just a decent guy. A decent human being. He’s honest.”
The crowds snaked up and down Islington Avenue from early. No admission til 10am but they’re happy to wait. They're expecting a show. They're gonna bloody well get one.
McIlroy, Finau and Thomas are in an extended final grouping that is the stuff of PGA Tour dreams. Lightning is feared but for now there's just a sweaty humidity that pushes the tension up another notch. Necks and the backs of knees are glistening and the atmosphere is really crackling as they tee off on the short par-four 1st. When they get to the green, McIlroy is the only one to birdie it. Out in front and off to see what he can see over the next 17.
And what do we see of Rory? The absolute very best of him. This is a Sunday that digs deep into your soul and reminds you, when he's like this (and when Tiger remains a shadow) McIlroy is the best damn thing that this game has going for it.
He'd told us on Saturday he'd set himself a score to win. You assume it must have been 45 the way he's going. The wedges feel good now. Really good. They're slicing through rough and fairway with abandon and giving balls no option but to find pins.
While Saturday was more leery, the hordes are still ravenous for him. What must it be like to have your name called out tens of thousands of times in a work week? It's a wonder he even turns to look. But there's no taking your eyes off him today. Nor Finau and Thomas either. The PGA Tour craved a captivating Sunday. Their wildest dreams are made a mockery of.
There's a wobble because there has to be. That's what he's been hammered for all these years. Consistency, consistency, consistency. Finishing what he's started. He'd gone 36 holes with just one bogey but when another arrives on the 13th Thomas moves in, smelling blood. But Rory, their Rory who they'll roar themselves hoarse for, won't succumb.
On the 17th, he and Thomas tied and Finau just one back, that killer instinct that drew us in in Rosses Point 17 years ago and in all the outposts that followed, none more so than the four Major moments, kicks in. It decides it. A wedge from the first cut is stitched into whispering distance of the pin. Two-shot swing. Game over. Me again.
As the crowds rush the 18th green, the marshals and security are caught on the hop. It's briefly edgy but McIlroy stands back from it all and surveys from the a height. He sees his people. And, given his offerings afterwards, he probably sees Greg Norman somewhere out there, watching on with nothing but limitless money and one less PGA Tour win.
And the rest of us? After a day such as this and a week such as this...what do we see? Maybe it's the wrong question. Maybe we need to move our feet first and get a different angle on our Rors-chach test. The Canadians see a beloved, adopted son. One with a new chip on his shoulder, which suits him. At home some may still see him in that harsh light that's been left on him all these years.
But after five days when when we all saw the naked greed of McDowell and the rest slithering to a moral low ground, it’s now time everyone takes that step back or sideways first. It’s hard out here and McIlroy, while being all things to all people at all times, is 33 and still delivering Sundays like this. Not always...but sometimes. There may be another in Boston next week. There may not. But in this time of grubby excess and a craving for which threatens the very sport of golf, there's a new, noble feel to .
It's time for some to see Rory McIlroy with a new perspective.
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