Rory McIlroy on bouncing back and dealing with the attention

BOUNCING BACK: Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy during a press conference ahead of The Open at Royal Troon, South Ayrshire, Scotland.

There’s something about Rory. It can’t just be the talent, or the drought, or the willingness to speak his mind. It’s something else, something less tangible. It has to be. Whatever it is, it draws people in. If golf remains the planet, then McIlroy is a moon with its own gravitational pull.

Six other players have sat down for setpiece press conferences over the first two days here in Ayrshire and four of them have fielded questions directly relating to the Northern Irishman and the stomach-punch that was his US Open experience last month.

These were heavy hitters in their own right. Defending champion Brian Harman, world number one Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau who pipped him to the prize at Pinehurst. Tiger. This is not normal.

Elite golfers have the money to seal themselves away in private compounds and travel the world on private jets but there is no shutting the world out when you cough up a first major title in a decade by signing for three bogeys in your last four Sunday holes.

McIlroy’s reaction to that was a silence that screamed the need for solitude. He was gone from Pinehurst by the time DeChambeau posed with the trophy and he found peace for a few days lost amid the hustle and bustle of Manhattan’s streets.

He’d already changed phone numbers by then, the ping of ten to 15 text messages from members of the media between the end game on Pinehurst’s 18th and his arrival back home that night confirming the need to re-establish a greater sense of space.

It was a move that consigned a supportive message from Woods, sent a week later, to the digital ether but it’s yet another example of the demands on a player who, according to Harman, can struggle to dine out without attracting more of the same circus.

“I regularly go out with my family and have coffee and have breakfast. Yeah, I get stopped sometimes and whatever, but I'd much rather have it that way because if I wasn't getting stopped and wasn't on TV all the time, I wouldn't be very good at my job. So it's nice to get recognized and nice to [have] people wish you well.

“But, yeah, there's times where you crave a little bit of anonymity and want to get out of the public eye, but I understand that in the position that I'm in, if I'm going to reap the rewards of the position I'm in, then there's other things you have to deal with as well, and I completely understand that.” There’s a strange juxtaposition at play here.

As composed as he is talking about all this, the evidence book points inexorably towards a mental fragility when explaining why this supremely gifted golfer is still waiting for a fifth major on the back of a three-year period where he has hit the crossbar time and time again.

There have been eight top tens in his last eleven, a 12th, a 22nd and the outlier that was a missed cut at August last year but the manner of his fall-shorts at St Andrews in 2022 and in North Carolina last month point to a man ill at ease.

Even Woods admitted to nerves at critical times back when looking back at his own heyday and, while McIlroy is happy to welcome nerves as a sign of a moment’s import, he harboured regrets at how he handled that back stretch at the US Open.

“It was just more a disappointment that I didn't handle those uneasy feelings as good as I could have. I alluded to this. I was probably more aware than I should have been of what was happening behind me and sort of got out of my own little head space a little too much.”

A 14-under par tie for fourth was a solid down payment on the week to follow here at Troon and, while a little better might have put him in contention to retain the title, the longer game here is in his reintegration to links golf.

McIlroy may have plenty of experience on these courses but he grew up on parkland gold at Holywood and has long become accustomed to the high, long game that is so suited to the game needed to prosper week to week in the States.

It’s trite to say that this would be the perfect time to win that elusive major. There have been too many too often since he held off Phil Mickelson, Rickie Fowler and Henrik Stenson to claim the US PGA at a darkening Valhalla ten years ago.

Still, if nothing else, a win this week would change everyone’s tune.

“It doesn't bother me. I know that I'm in a good spot. If I think about 2015 through 2020, that five-year stretch, I seldom had a realistic chance to win a major championship in that five-year period. So I'd much rather have these close calls.

“It means that I'm getting closer, but yeah, absolutely, I'd love to be able to play the golf and get one over the line, but as soon as I do that, people are going to say, ‘well, when are you going to win your sixth?’ So it's never ending.”