HOW MANY MORE MAJORS FOR RORY MCILROY? WE MIGHT GIVE HIS MIND A BREATHER
Certainly, he can win the first two legs of a calendar Grand Slam, but he comes to Quail Hollow calling his Masters win possibly “the highlight of my career,” when some of us say he can win 10 majors
The people used to root for Tiger Woods, against duffers and a mad world, attaching themselves to his Nike ball before he leaped and roared. Now they root for Rory McIlroy, who was supposed to be Tiger 11 years ago and required a steep learning curve. He finally won the Masters, securing himself a career Grand Slam.
“Welcome to the club, kid,” Woods texted him.
And here he is a month later at Quail Hollow, trying to win his sixth major title. He is golf. He is our attention span. He is resilience. We want him on TV screens and want him in every commercial. Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau will try to win the PGA Championship, but now that we’ve seen McIlroy celebrate, we want him to continue his party this weekend. How many more blessings might arrive for a man who is one major behind Nick Faldo and Phil Mickelson, and hopes are grand he’ll end up with more big ones — say, 10 — than anyone but Jack Nicklaus, Woods and Walter Hagen.
But first, McIlroy must share the public’s pleasure moving forward. Is it possible, after he spoke Wednesday in Charlotte, that more colossal triumphs aren’t foremost in what has been a cluttered mind. He was pounded into oblivion, year after year, about not winning at Augusta National. Does he need more time to carry on with greatness?
“I sit here knowing that very well could be the highlight of my career,” McIlroy said. “That’s a very cool thing. I want to still create a lot of other highlights and high points, but I’m not sure if any other win will live up to what happened a few weeks ago.
“I’ve done everything I’ve wanted to do in the game. I dreamed as a child of becoming the best player in the world and winning all the majors. I’ve done that. Everything beyond this, for however long I decide to play the game competitively, is a bonus.”
His words were light years away from his silence on a Sunday in Georgia. During the final round, he refused to speak with DeChambeau, who said, “Didn't talk to me once all day. He wouldn't talk to me. He was just like — just being focused, I guess. It's not me, though.” McIlroy was absorbed in trying to win a green jacket. He wanted no part of small talk with an unpopular competitor who could have won the tournament.
“I don't know what he was expecting," McIlroy said. "We're trying to win the Masters. I'm not going to try to be his best mate out there. Look, everyone approaches the game in different ways. Yeah, like, I was focused on myself and what I needed to do. That's really all that it was. It wasn't anything against him. It's just I felt that's what I needed to do to try to get the best out of myself that day.”
Might he focus again and remove eyeballs from Jordan Spieth, who hasn’t finished a career Grand Slam since winning the British Open in 2017? That would be a nice story, but I’d prefer to see McIlroy attempt a calendar Grand Slam. I am dreaming, because it never has happened unless we count Woods holding all four titles at once. The U.S. Open is at Oakmont. The Open championship is at Royal Portrush. Doable?
His good friend, Shane Lowry, says he shouldn’t emphasize magnificence when he is finally is experiencing it. “I keep saying to him, no matter what he does now, it doesn’t matter,” Lowry said. “I found it hard in 2019 when I won The Open to kind of come back out and, you almost want it too much sometimes to almost forget about that and move on. I think there’s a part of you that should enjoy what you’ve just done.”
Never mind what other challengers think. They know McIlroy has won four times at Quail Hollow on the PGA Tour. “I would argue he’s the best driver of the ball I’ve ever seen, and that is extremely important here,” Justin Thomas told the Associated Press.
Said DeChambeau: “I do believe you have to have a lot of distance out here. Rory is a great driver of the golf ball, and his iron play is great, too. I think it's a golf course that sets up for his shot shapes pretty well, and I think it sets up well for mine, too. We'll see. Maybe I do well, maybe I don't. But I'm certainly going to give it my all, and I know Rory is. Hopefully, we can have another go at it again like the Masters.”
That’s what golf needs, another sizable ratings weekend after the Masters. A touch of brilliance from McIlroy will lure fans from the NBA and NHL playoffs and the Preakness Stakes, if not from NFL post-scheduling lunacy. Golf didn’t end when he won at Augusta.
“I know what my abilities are. I know the golf that I can play. And if I keep turning up and just trying to do that each and every week, especially in these four big ones a year, I know that I’ll have my chances,” McIlroy said. “I’ve talked about trying to become the best European ever or the best international player ever, or whatever that is. I want to enjoy what I’ve achieved, and I want to enjoy the last decade or whatever of my career, and I don’t want to burden myself by numbers or statistics. I just want to go and try to play the best golf I can.”
Numbers and statistics are parcels of media coverage. We haven’t gone away, either.
There is much more to watch.
###
Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.