by Shane Ryan
* * *
“A decade ago, Rory McIlroy was a 15-year-old kid with some skill at golf and a dad who believed in him wholeheartedly. So much so, in fact, that Gerry McIlroy and three friends put together £400, just less than $700 in today’s dollars, on an audacious bet: young Rory would win the Open Championship before he turned 26. The odds? 500-1. McIlroy is now 25….The bet would pay £200,000, or more than $340,000, if McIlroy is able to win.”
—Yahoo Sports
Rory had experience with big leads. The Masters he lost in 2012 had taught him the unease that came with holding a Sunday edge, and his comeback from seven shots down in May’s BMW PGA Championship clued him in to the mentality of the chase pack. He had watched the scoreboard that day, and he remembered the precise moment, as he waited on the 11th tee, when Thomas Bjorn had come careening back to earth with a triple bogey on the sixth. He saw his opportunity—a few birdies would increase the pressure Bjorn was undoubtedly feeling, but they had to come now. Collapses of that magnitude happen because of negative momentum, and anything the trailing golfer can do to heighten the sense of impending doom will hasten the meltdown. Bjorn heard the cheers coming from ahead, and he saw Rory’s name gaining ground on the scoreboards. Finally, stress and bad play got the better of him, and the impossible outcome materialized.
Except it wasn’t impossible—it never was, and Rory knew it. Just two years earlier, Adam Scott had come into the final day at the Open with the same exact six-shot lead over Ernie Els that Rory would take into Sunday. Scott had blown it at the end, and Rory could, too. That knowledge, paradoxically, gave him power. He wouldn’t coast, and as long as he didn’t give too much ground, or panic when somebody below him made his inevitable run, he’d be leaving Hoylake with the Claret Jug.
He hit the driving range just after one p.m. after spending Saturday night relaxing and watching Jackass Number Two—the latest in a series of nightly films that had included Django Unchained and The Internship. He wore a pink-and-gray Nike top, and gray Nike pants. The English sky, too, was a palette of grays—a heavy gunmetal slate where the dense clouds massed, lighter shades of ash and silver where the faint light hinted at the presence of a sun somewhere behind the gloom. No surprises here—as Alistair Beggs, the captain of Royal Liverpool, told me, Hoylake actually gets less rain than almost everywhere on the east coast of the United States, but far less sunshine, too. It just mists with a depressing constancy, rarely yielding to clear skies or vigorous downpours.
Like Kaymer at Sawgrass and Pinehurst, Rory situated himself on the far left of the range—the high ground, so to speak, where he could see everybody, but they couldn’t see him. In front of him, Rickie Fowler wore his Sunday orange and hit looping irons. His agent, Sam MacNaughton, stood beside him, eyes glued to his phone, mouth twisted in a half smirk. On the far right, Dustin Johnson, starting the day tied with Sergio in third place, stared blankly at the yardage markers while he hit.
Aside from the bleachers that rose behind the players, the range could have belonged to any municipal course in America, with its plain yardage placards placed at fifty-meter intervals. It was a far cry from the elaborate PGA ranges, with greens and bunkers and hills offering a simulation of shots the players might face on the course.
Sergio made the scene next, joining Rickie near the middle of the range. They gazed at the clouds and talked about the possibility of rain, while Rory, with his massive forearms and a swing like a liquid whip, bashed ball after ball with his driver. As the tee times approached, they left the range and made their way to the chipping green. Rory earned the loudest roar on his departure, offering a hint at the partisan atmosphere he’d enjoy all day. He muttered a few words as he passed Sergio, who issued a terse “yeah” in response—none of yesterday’s post-round bonhomie.
They hit sand shots and short pitches next, ringed by black Mercedes cars and every equipment truck in the business—TaylorMade, Ping, Callaway, Cleveland, Mizuno, Nike, Wilson, Fleetwood, Titleist. Then it was off to the first tee, where Fowler, back in the final group on a major Sunday, gave Rory a quick soul shake as he prepared to stagger up his latest mountain.
—
Sergio came out hot. With three birdies in his first five holes, he served quick notice to Rory that the day would not be an easy coronation. The fist pumps and the cries of “vamos!” came in exhilarated bursts, and if you didn’t know Sergio’s past, you might think it was the start of a sustained charge.
Rory birdied the first to assert his control, but on the fifth, after an awful approach and a weak chip, he missed his par putt. The par-3 sixth brought more trouble when his tee shot rolled down into a hollow on the left side of the green. He stared at the leaderboard before he took his chip, and saw that he led Sergio by just five shots. The chip was adequate, but the par putt was not, and when the five-footer missed, his margin shrunk to four.
He nearly gave another shot away on the seventh hole after a wayward drive, but he recovered with a good sand save from the pot bunker. He walked on to the eighth tee, head bobbing, eyes staring at nothing and everything. On the par 4, a dogleg left, he made a standard par, and seemed to recover some stability. Fowler, meanwhile, was having a quiet front nine. Aside from a birdie on the second hole, he made all pars through the turn. He was playing solid at a time when solid wasn’t quite good enough, and each missed birdie putt tightened the noose.
With the fans hugging the hillsides, Rory hit his tee shot on the par-3 ninth so close that it nearly hit the hole, and came to rest fifteen feet past. His birdie putt broke hard to left in the last three feet, but he hit it on the perfect line and moved back to even par for the round.
That’s when Sergio struck the biggest blow of the day—on the par-5 10th, he hit a 6-iron from 228 yards to twelve feet. With Rory peering on from the fairway, and sailboats moving slowly past on the river, he buried the eagle putt. He trailed by just two strokes now, and had emphatically passed the first part of his difficult test—stage a furious charge over the first two hours and pressure the leader. With his first major victory looking more and more realistic, Sergio now had to accomplish the second, more difficult part of the task—maintain his fearless play, keep charging, and put up a score that could win the event even if Rory didn’t falter.
And it didn’t look like Rory would falter. After Sergio’s eagle, his own approach cleared the front bunker on no. 10, leaving him a simple two-putt for birdie to extend the lead back to three. Fowler followed with a birdie of his own to stay five shots behind, still within shouting distance, but the fight for the Claret Jug looked increasingly like a two-horse race.
Starting on no. 11, the leaders turned back into the wind, marching along the river for four holes. Sergio hit a short approach into the green on 11, and began begging as he watched it fly to the hole. His voice reached the desperate upper registers—“Oh, be good, please, be good, please, please, please!”—but the wind prevailed, and he came up just short, leaving a long birdie putt that he narrowly missed. Rory followed by making par with a short but tricky left-to-right putt, securing another precious draw.
From the 12th tee, you could see the church spires and dark roofs of Hoylake reflecting in the afternoon sun. In the fairway off the tee on the par-4, Sergio found his ball behind a swale that made his approach shot practically blind. He had lost some of his spontaneity now that things were tight, and stood over each shot, analyzing obsessively. He backed off again when a cell phone rang out along the ropes. When he finally hit, the ball took off to the right, fading into the gallery. Sergio shouted a warning, and with a clang, the ball hit near the top of the metal bleachers.
British television feeds are notoriously poor at tracking balls in their gray native skies—especially when compared to the efficiency of American crews—so it took a moment for viewers to understand what had happened. In an incredible break, the ball had caromed back toward the green, running almost all the way to the putting surface. From there, Sergio went up and down, blew a kiss toward
the gallery, and threw the ball back to them.
A hole later, on the 194-yard 13th, with the gulls swarming on the beach behind him, Rory hit one of his worst shots of the day. Sergio had barely avoided a nasty pot bunker to the front right of the green, and chipped up close to save par. Rory came up well short, landing his tee shot somewhere in the thick fescue to the left of the fairway. He did his best with his recovery shot, but the ball skipped on the green and nearly ran all the way to the same bunker Sergio had avoided. Rickie had come up short off the tee as well—the wind was knocking everything down—but he went up-and-down for par. No such luck for Rory, who two-putted for bogey to fall to -16. The lead was back to two.
—
The fans shouted vaguely Spanish words at Sergio—“Ole!” and “Aye-aye-aye!”—and gave him an enormous, sarcastic cheer when he emerged from a Porta-Potty between the 12th green and 13th hole. There was something familiar and almost friendly about these instances of near-mockery, but for the majority of the English, Rory was the chosen one. It reminded me of Andy Murray, a Scot, trying to win Wimbledon—he wasn’t quite their own, but it was close enough for jazz.
Still, they stuck by the Spaniard as he climbed the hill to the 14th tee, with a very English style of support that existed somewhere between sincere and derisive. He was moving now at a pensive pace, brooding over each shot, and on his approach shot from 172 yards away, he came just inches shy of carrying a ridge in front of the flag. He gave his birdie putt a good run, but it missed, again by inches. Rory played very safe, took his par, and Rickie got in trouble off the tee, laid up in the fairway, and made an excellent up-and-down from eighty-three yards away.
By now, all three players were showing the different sides of their nervous personalities. Rickie was silent and stoic, resolutely focused over each shot, playing the game with the utmost sincerity as he tried to ignore the stakes. Sergio had gone antsy, yelling at every ball, hopping up and down nervously, and talking to anyone who would listen—his caddie before shots, reporters between holes, and even his playing partner, Dustin Johnson, who made a poor audience. Rory was pure aggression, even when he chose to play cautious—eyes burning, stride forceful, resolute with a dash of fury.
All three made pars on 14, and moved on to the par-3, 163-yard 15th, downhill and finally out of the wind. When Sergio is in contention at a major, and he begins to vibrate with that unstable, manic energy, we’ve been conditioned to wait for the other shoe to drop—for disaster to strike. Even before it happened at Hoylake, you sensed that the moment was imminent. On the tee, he took out his pitching wedge, backed off once, and sent his ball high into the wind.
“Ohhhh,” he screamed, “no!”
It came up short, hit hard, and rolled sideways into the bunker. This wasn’t the worst place in the world to be, but the catastrophe we’d been expecting came next. As he began his downswing in the bunker, with Rory looking on from the tee, Sergio dipped his shoulder in an attempt to elevate the ball and lift it safely over the steep face of the bunker. He made impact far too early, and got a load of sand for his troubles. The ball popped up, peeked over the sod wall for just a moment, and came right back down in the hazard.
This was the shot he couldn’t afford. He saved bogey, but it meant that he’d need miracles on the finishing stretch—two eagles, probably—to have a chance. On the tee as Sergio holed out, Rory could be seen laughing with Fowler. He knew the heat was off, at least a little, and he hit a flat 9-iron into the wind that landed safely on the green. He made par from there when birdie would have secured the championship.
Sergio reached the 16th green, the par-5, in two, but somehow left his eagle putt short. Rory followed with a mammoth 360-yard drive, after which he spun on his heels to point out a heckler who had been dogging him all day, and who purposefully coughed on his downswing. Security dragged the culprit off the course, and McIlroy hit an easy approach to the green and two-putted for birdie. His three-shot lead was intact, and when Sergio missed his birdie putt on 17 after a low, line-drive approach into the wind, he knew that one more par would secure the win. It would require a tremendous pitch—his second shot on the par-4 17th ended up in the rough, on the wrong side of a pot bunker that guarded the hole. Rory struck it beautifully, high over the bunker, and an easy par putt sent him to 18 with the same comfortable cushion.
A birdie there would have tied Tiger’s British Open record score of -18, but Rory chose to hit iron off the tee, nice and safe, to avoid the out-of-bounds area on the right. As he moved down the fairway, a few hopeful rays of sunshine shone down from above, fighting their losing battle against the dusk. With 257 yards remaining, he took aim at the hole and wound up in a bunker just shy of the green. Sergio failed to make eagle, and though Rickie hit a solid approach to reach the green in two, he was still far from the hole. One critical shot remained for Rory—all that could stop him now was a Sergio-esque error from the bunker.
He knew better. The shot rose from the sand with ease, landing on the green, and you could actually see the tension leave his body. When Fowler missed his eagle putt, the last bit of doubt drained away.
Flags from every player’s home nation whipped in the wind above the grandstands as Rory tapped in for par and basked in the thunderous applause that rang from the stadium. The look of confidence on his face was almost brash as he pumped his fist twice, with emphasis. He had gone wire-to-wire, and become the first European in golf history to win three different majors. He was also just the third player ever, after Jack and Tiger, to own three major titles before his 26th birthday. He tossed the ball into the gallery, hugged his mother, and applauded the fans. Later, at the awards ceremony, holding the Claret Jug, a sly grin crossed his face as he addressed them.
“And to the fans, you’ve turned out in thousands and thousands this week and on behalf of all the players, I’d like to say thank you very much. The support has been absolutely fantastic all week, you’ve been a pleasure to play in front of, and even though I’m a Man United fan sitting here—”
They didn’t let him finish the sentence. The boos rang down from the masses of Liverpool and Everton supporters, and Rory’s grin only grew wider. After his speech, he sat on the lip of a pot bunker and posed for photos with the Claret Jug.
Under the gray sky, the last rebellious shafts of sunlight now quelled, he looked older. Time, and the storm and stress of the year gone by, had left its mark. The weary, battle-scarred face we saw illuminated by the stroboscopic flashes of a hundred cameras could no longer be mistaken for the naive, innocent prodigy that had once walked these fairways lightly, untouched by pain or adversity. This was the man who had emerged from the fire, battered but unbowed. With his legs pressed to the sod, he held the trophy like it could only ever belong to him. It was possible, at that precise moment, to see Rory unvarnished—flawed, brilliant, and deadly.
* * *
*1 The general ill will died down slightly in 2014, when Rory announced that he wouldbe playing for Ireland after all.
*2 In a wonderful piece of irony, the New York Times ran a feature on how well Rory and Horizon worked together just two weeks before their acrimonious split.
19
AKRON, OHIO
Dustin Johnson’s Black Friday
“I am taking a leave of absence from professional golf, effective immediately. I will use this time to seek professional help for personal challenges I have faced. By committing the time and resources necessary to improve my mental health, physical well-being and emotional foundation, I am confident that I will be better equipped to fulfill my potential and become a consistent champion. I respectfully ask my fans, well-wishers and the media for privacy as I embark upon this mission of self-improvement.”
—Statement from DUSTIN JOHNSON, Thursday, July 31, 2014
On Monday, July 28, 2014, Dustin Johnson announced he would be withdrawing from the WGC-Bridgestone event in Akron due to “personal challenges.” The formal tone of the statement, and all its attempts at sel
f-reckoning and gravity, probably didn’t benefit from a recent picture posted by his fiancée Paulina Gretzky on Instagram that showed a barefoot Johnson wearing a blue caddie’s bib and reading her putt—but then, everybody figured the words had been crafted by his agency, and not Johnson himself.
By Thursday, the withdrawal became an extended leave of absence, and his agent David Winkle confirmed that he would miss both the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup—a huge loss for the United States, as Johnson had gone 3-0 in Medinah, posting one of just three American victories on that disastrous Sunday.
I was in the media center in Akron on Thursday when news of his “leave of absence” came down, and witnessed firsthand the instant roar that went up around the room. Personally, I was totally stumped at the reaction—the laughter, the shouting, and most of all, the sense that everybody in the room knew what the hell was going on except me.
Which turned out to be true. Normally, journalists would greet this kind of news with puzzlement and a collective attempt to dig for the truth. This time, no further investigation was necessary. I finally worked up the courage to admit my complete ignorance—what was happening?
A writer in my aisle turned to face me, placed one finger on the right side of his nose, and inhaled mightily through his left nostril.
“No shit?”
No shit—Johnson, they told me, had almost certainly failed a drug test for cocaine, and this wasn’t the first time. He had taken a three-month break in early 2012, and the excuse then was that he’d hurt his back lifting a Jet Ski. In media circles, I learned, it was widely known that the story was nonsense—he had tested positive for cocaine, and had been hit with a suspension by the PGA Tour.