by Shane Ryan
YouTube offers a small archive of Rory’s childhood, starting with a home movie shot in a dark living room, where the three-year-old takes full swings with a wedge, hitting a ball off the carpet and onto the couch while soccer highlights play on the small television in the background. There’s also an interview from BBC Northern Ireland after the nine-year-old Rory won the World Junior Tournament at Doral, in what the anchor called “the searing Miami heat.” Rory, all freckles and grins, has the same soft, lilting accent that’s become familiar today—a contrast to the flat Northern Irish timbre you hear from the likes of McDowell and David Feherty. In another clip from that year, on Ulster Television’s the “Kelly” show, he juggles a ball on his wedge, and then shifts the club between his legs without missing a beat. He chips a golf ball into a washing machine, and tells the host that Darren Clarke is his favorite Irish golfer.
“If the Americans have Tiger Woods,” the host says in closing, “we have young Rory.”
From Doral, he put together a sparkling junior career that included a wide array of tournament wins and honors, including a victory in the 2004 Junior Ryder Cup. He set a course record at age sixteen with a 61 at Royal Portrush, the Northern Irish course that hosted the 1951 British Open. That same year, he dealt with his only real crisis of faith in golf.
“I was ready to give it up,” he told me in Akron, at the WGC-Bridgestone Championship. “I just won the Mullingar Scratch Cup, and I remember the drive home with my dad. It was like a three-hour drive. And I said to him, ‘I don’t like this anymore. I don’t enjoy it. I just won, and I don’t know, I’m not happy, I’m not excited.’ ”
His parents told him they just wanted him to be happy, and while they may have been experiencing a bit of panic inside, they advised him to do whatever he wanted. He went home, and didn’t golf for three days. When those three days had ended, he decided that he loved golf again, and today he chalks it up to the hormonal issues of a “grumpy teenager.”
“There was a teenage rebellion, yes,” he said. “For three days.”
The angst never returned, and his career took off with startling speed. In 2007, still just eighteen, he was the low amateur at the British Open in Carnoustie. After turning professional, he won his first European Tour in Dubai before his twentieth birthday. In 2010 he joined the PGA Tour as one of the world’s top-ten golfers, and he wasted no time making an impact. He won his first event at Quail Hollow with a course record 62 in the final round, set another course record on Thursday at the British Open in St. Andrew’s, and nearly joined Martin Kaymer and Bubba Watson in their playoff at the PGA Championship.
He made the strange decision in 2011 to return to the European Tour and to skip the Players Championship—choices he regretted almost immediately, and which led to him firing his agent Chubby Chandler that November and joining Horizon. Before he left, he nearly won the Masters, racing out to a four-stroke lead on Sunday before posting a disastrous 80 to drop out of the top ten. It was his hardest moment as a professional—he had lost his confidence on the back nine, and stopped trusting his putter. He faced the media, and all he could hope was that the next time he had a chance at a major, he’d handle the pressure with more aplomb.
He didn’t have to wait long. At the very next major stop, he tore apart Congressional Country Club and won the U.S. Open running away. The next March, after a win at the Honda Classic, he ascended to the world number 1 for the first time. He held the top spot through a spectacular season that included wins in Dubai, two FedEx Cup events, and a record-setting eight-stroke win at the PGA Championship, his second major.
At twenty-three, he was the Player of the Year on both the PGA and European Tours, and unlike other child stars—Scott, Rose, Day—he was naturally aggressive, and had the transcendent game to put himself in the hot seat again and again until he could occupy it comfortably. Now, two years before his twenty-fifth birthday, he had become more than just a young superstar—he was the heir apparent to Tiger Woods.
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There’s a fearlessness and intelligence to McIlroy that transcends the course, and these are the qualities that place him above golfers of equal—or at least near-equal—talent. They also get him in occasional trouble. Northern Irish politics aside, Rory won’t hesitate to speak his mind, especially when he feels threatened. It’s almost as though he makes up for the gag order on politics and religion by letting loose with an added bit of volume on everything else.
Some of the controversies he’s encountered are nonstories whipped into a froth by the media. When he called the Ryder Cup an “exhibition” in 2009, and admitted that he’d rather win individual tournaments, he was only saying what every golfer felt to be true. Many of them loved the Ryder Cup, and the atmosphere was unlike any other, but there’s not one player who would trade a victory there for an individual major. In fact, you get the sense that some of the most passionate Ryder Cuppers, like Ian Poulter and Sergio Garcia, love it that extra bit because they’ve never won a major—it’s a substitute high, in a way.
Other moments, though, have been truly tense. When a TV reporter and former golfer named Jay Townsend said on air that Rory should fire his longtime caddie, J. P. Fitzgerald, McIlroy took to Twitter, firing off a harsh salvo at Townsend: “Shut up…you’re a commentator and a failed golfer, your opinion means nothing!”
“I don’t know if he’s got something in for my caddie, J.P.,” McIlroy said in a presser later that week. “He’s been going at him for the last three years. And it was just one comment too far. I’ve got to stand up for my caddie. J.P. is one of my closest friends…and I just had to say something.”
He was called immature in some corners for the reaction, but the more you learn about Rory, the more you realize it wasn’t youth or immaturity at all, but the cunning instinct of someone who realizes that if you let someone push you once, they might keep pushing forever.
And Rory, despite the soft voice, freckles, curly hair, and the last days of his puppy-dog looks—“I want to pinch his cheeks, he’s so cute!” I heard a young girl squeal at the Deutsche Bank Championship—is no pushover. His fire is reminiscent of the man he’s chasing, though Rory on the whole seems more stable and less self-destructive than Tiger.
The two spent some time together late in the 2014 season in New York, appearing together on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. The next week, I asked if he could recognize a kindred spirit when they had a private moment together—something they could see only in each other, and that set them apart as psychological competitors.
“In some ways, yes,” he said. “We talked about a few things, and he’s telling me like, I’m not going to let you win a green jacket next year…and I might not look it, but I’m the exact same way. I’ve got a very competitive spirit, but it would only be on a golf course. Like, I’ll let you win in a game of pool. I don’t care about that. But golf, it’s my thing to be competitive at and it’s my thing to succeed in, so of course I’m really competitive. And even if it doesn’t look it, on the inside I’m trying to beat those guys to death.”
But trying and doing are two different things, and it’s the rare golfer who masters both in his early twenties. There’s a ruthlessness to Rory, and watching him over the course of a year, I came to believe that his ability to put others away with such cold efficiency boiled down to the simple fact that he’s smarter. He rarely makes the mistake of playing recklessly, the way Mickelson can. He knows when to turn his analytical mind off and play with pure instinct, rather than linger in an intellectual funk or give in to anger. If Rickie Fowler takes a Zen approach to the game, McIlroy understands the art of war. He’s equipped with the golfer’s equivalent of street smarts, and at every moment, he’s the biggest threat on the course.
That’s why he defended his caddie. By firing back at Townsend, he didn’t just shut up a lone commentator. He showed loyalty, and broadcast a clear signal to anyone who might be thinking of taking their own potshots. Speak carefully, he seemed to say, or yo
u’re in for a fight, and I’m not the kind to pull punches.
Rory has an intuitive understanding of power. How to earn it, how to wield it, and how to keep others from taking it away. Like Tiger, he’d also learned to sniff out weakness at a young age, and to conceal his own. It’s too bad that the “Shark” nickname was wasted on Greg Norman, because Tiger and Rory are the ones who can truly smell blood.
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By 2013, the war with Horizon Sports Management was in full swing, and the equipment change was sabotaging his game.*2 McIlroy contended that Horizon coerced him into signing an unfair “limiting contract” that cost him almost seven million dollars in related fees, which apparently occurred at a Christmas party in 2011. Forbes reported that Horizon’s deal gave them 20 percent of “off-the-course income”—including the enormous contract with Nike, which was less than the ten years and $250 million originally reported, per SI’s Alan Shipnuck, but not significantly less. It’s an incredibly high commission rate—significantly higher than the terms given to Graeme McDowell by the same company. But McIlroy’s argument—that he was young, naive, and lacked legal counsel—sounded a bit thin, and Horizon decided to take the fight to him by countersuing for around $3 million in unpaid commissions.
The lawsuit was settled out of court in early 2015, but in 2013, the confluence of stressors contributed to a decline in his game. It also hurt his friendship with Graeme McDowell, particularly when he announced in May that he’d be leaving to form his own company, Rory McIlroy Inc.
In details that emerged over the next year, Horizon accused Rory of timing his lawsuit to hit a day before McDowell’s wedding in September 2013, which would be attended by Horizon agents—a wedding Rory skipped in favor of a Nike photo shoot. It later came to light that McDowell was a Horizon shareholder, which raised questions about his harsh comments toward McIlroy, as well as his initial recruitment.
Rory McIlroy Inc. took full effect late in the year, with Gerry McIlroy assuming a leadership role, but Rory’s 2013 season dragged on with one mediocre result after another. At the Honda Classic, he withdrew in the second round after a 7-over start, and cited pain in his wisdom tooth—a dubious explanation at best, considering how frustrated he appeared with his game, though he did send a doctor’s note from Belfast to the PGA Tour the next Monday.
He relinquished his number 1 ranking after holding it a year, and his low point came at the British Open in Muirfield, when Nick Faldo publicly lectured him about focusing on golf. McIlroy, looking irritated and a bit sullen, defended his work ethic and said, “Nick should know how hard this game is at times. He’s been in our position before, and he should know how much work we all do put into it.” Three days later, he finished up an ugly 79-75, failing to make the cut in a British Open for the first time in his professional career.
By late 2013, though, his game had started to round into something resembling its old form, and a one-shot win over Adam Scott at the Australian Open in December hinted at an imminent return to greatness.
In Sydney on New Year’s Eve, he sat in a boat with his longtime girlfriend Caroline Wozniacki, the tennis star, in the harbor. Fireworks went off, and he was prepared to propose when a fellow passenger, quite drunk, jumped in the water and spoiled the moment. He saved the proposal for his hotel room, she said yes, and finally, it seemed as though his life had settled into a calm spell.
“I feel I have stability in my life now,” he told The Telegraph, “and the engagement will only help with regards to knowing everything in my life is set. I mean, if you get engaged, you plan to spend the rest of your life with that person, so it is a big decision. But she’s definitely the right girl for me.”
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Or, maybe not.
In May, a few days after they sent out wedding invitations, Rory called off the wedding. Worse, he broke the news to Wozniacki with nothing more than a brief phone call.
“The problem is mine,” read a statement issued by Rory McIlroy Inc. “The wedding invitations issued at the weekend made me realize that I wasn’t ready for all that marriage entails. I wish Caroline all the happiness she deserves and thank her for the great times we’ve had.”
Rory’s ice-cold method of deep-sixing his fiancée was particularly eyebrow-raising when you consider an excerpt from a New York Times article in May 2013:
“At the end of last year, McIlroy sat down with his strength coach, Steve McGregor, who also works with the golfer Lee Westwood and has consulted with the Knicks and Manchester United.
Citing scheduling difficulties, McIlroy ended their professional relationship. But to ensure that they would remain friendly, he chose to tell McGregor about his decision face-to-face instead of in a text message or an e-mail.”
In other words, a trainer merits a sit-down dismissal, but a fiancée gets the kiss-off by phone.
McIlroy is a conscientious person, or he at least fakes it well. If a reporter asks him a question with a flawed premise, for instance, he’ll correct the man obliquely in response, rather than pointing out the error in public as many golfers love to do. The courtesy he extended to McGregor in 2012 wasn’t out of the ordinary.
Considering all that, the Wozniacki phone-dumping was a bizarre move, and inexplicable on its face.
Those who hoped that karma would punish McIlroy for the cruel breakup were disappointed. He made his key putting alignment fix at Augusta, and already his game was looking nearly as strong as it had in 2012. In his very first tournament after the breakup in 2014, he won the European Tour’s BMW PGA Championship with a final round 66, chasing down Thomas Bjorn from seven strokes behind. The message had been received around the golf world—Rory was back, and he was shooting some very low scores.
What we knew, in the days leading up to the British Open, was that if he could beat his so-called “Friday curse,” everyone else would be in serious trouble.
And Rory—shark that he was—knew it, too.
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With three holes remaining in his third round Hoylake, the field had crept up behind Rory, like cagey assassins who move only when their target is facing away. A new feeling arrived, just briefly—something like vulnerability, but less pronounced. Rory had spent most of the day at even par or +1, not quite as transcendent under the gray British skies, with gulls circling the beach on the River Dee, and seals basking on the banks. The wind had kindly stayed away, and though Rory showed signs of fading, a few long par saves, and a few great approaches, kept the competition at bay.
At the end of the opening nine, Sergio Garcia caught fire with two straight birdies. On the 11th hole, Rickie Fowler—his facial hair cut into something approximating a Fu Manchu—sank a long birdie to pull within one. This broke the two-shot cushion, that mythical blockade that nobody had breached against Martin Kaymer at Pinehurst. Another birdie at 12 for Fowler, along with a bogey for Rory, and they were tied at -12.
It looked like the front-runner had faded, and would have to scrap and fight just to stay in Sunday’s final group. Instead, Rory reacted like a sprinter who had turned off the jets and started to coast, only to see another runner catch up. It served as a reminder—yes, that’s right, I need to go!
And go he did. A birdie on 14 propelled him back into the lead, and on 16, a par 5, he showcased the most devastating element of his game. Rory had packed on lots of muscle since 2012, and while he had always been incredibly long off the tee, now he had the core strength and the general mass to stabilize his entire swing—which gave him even more distance, and better accuracy. At the end of 2014, only Bubba Watson and Dustin Johnson had a higher average driving distance—remarkable, considering Rory’s size—and even compared to those two, the margin was razor-thin. Considering the strength of the rest of his game, Rory became almost unbeatable when he could drive the ball straight; he was like an amalgam of Bubba Watson and Zach Johnson, strength and precision contained in a single golfer.
On the par-5 16th, he smashed one of his trademark drives, leaving himself 252 yards t
o the green. His 4-iron reached with ease, and he poured in the first eagle of the day on the hole. On 18, another par 5, a massive drive left him a simple 5-iron from 239. Again, he stuck it, and drained the first eagle of the day on that hole. The devestating closing kick redeemed what had been, for sixteen holes, a very mediocre round.
The contrast of how he finished, compared to Garcia and Fowler, brought to mind what Jason Day had said about the perils of being in contention. In that fight-or-flight moment, will a golfer retreat from the distress, sacrificing a few strokes to ease the tension, or will he surge forward, resolved to living comfortably in the flames? While Rory had set his jaw and thrived, Sergio had played even-par golf on the back nine, and Fowler made three bogeys as he stumbled to the finish. In the span of five holes, the tie at -12 had become a rout—Rory led Fowler by six shots, and Sergio by seven.
That stretch was just the latest example of the qualities that separate a “gamer”—someone who handles the pressure and excels—from everyone else. It comes down to a simple question of comfort: Do you believe this is where you’re supposed to be? Each time a player like Rory beats an opponent in that circumstance, it creates psychological ammunition for the next battle—success builds on success, and failure on failure.
Rickie looked despondent in his post-match interview, while Sergio had adopted his usual “everything’s fine!” demeanor, smiling and shrugging and even hugging Rory during a television interview.
By the time McIlroy came to the press tent, the rain was beating loudly on the roof, validating the R&A’s choice to send the players off early that morning. The forecast on Sunday called for clear skies, but when Rory burst through the door, he was soaked from the walk. It didn’t matter—he came in laughing, and he left with a smile. He had put his two closest competitors under his boot heel with the spectacular eagles, and he knew it. Now, he just had to grind them to dust.