Everyone who follows golf remembers Rory McIlroy’s performance on the last day of the 2011 Masters. It wasn’t so much the final-round 80 that knocked him from a four-shot lead to a tie for 15th place but the way he handled himself in the wake of that disaster.
At the age of 21, he was in serious contention in a major championship for the first time, and he flat-out choked. Many players simply stalk off after a day like that — Tiger Woods perfected the art early in his career — but McIlroy stood under Augusta National’s famous tree and answered every question he was asked.
“All the things he’s done since then, I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of him than that day,” said David Feherty, his fellow Northern Irishman. “He was all class.”
Eight weeks later, he claimed his first major title, winning the U.S. Open at Congressional by eight shots. By the time he was 25, he had won four majors: two PGA Championships, the British Open and that U.S. Open.
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Now recall last month’s U.S. Open. Late on Sunday, he took a two-shot lead to the 15th tee at Pinehurst, playing sublime golf. It looked as if McIlroy was going to win his first major since the 2014 PGA Championship. Then he bogeyed three of the last four holes, missing short putts on Nos. 16 and 18, and lost to Bryson DeChambeau by a shot.
This wasn’t a 21-year-old kid who knew he would have lots more chances. This was a 35-year-old who had been achingly close in the past 10 years but hadn’t been able to get over the finish line. And then he fell in the final yards, just short of the tape.
This time, McIlroy couldn’t handle it. After watching DeChambeau make his final clinching putt, he stormed off — failing to congratulate the winner, refusing to speak with NBC or the media and wheeling out of the Pinehurst parking lot.
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Was it understandable under the circ*mstances? Yes. Was McIlroy entitled to a mulligan after all the times he handled defeat with grace and patience? Yes.
And yet for all of us who were there at the 2011 Masters and have known him since then, it was disappointing because it was so un-Rory.
For a long time now, he has been one of those rare athletes who actually live by the most famous words in Rudyard Kipling’s most famous poem — “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same …”
McIlroy has done that throughout his career — always honestly. He has never been one for platitudes. When he joined many top players in skipping the 2016 Olympics — the Zika virus was the excuse du jour — he was asked whether he would watch the Olympics. “Probably the events like track and field, swimming, diving, the stuff that matters,” he answered.
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He was plundered by the European media and (surprise) by NBC for that comment. After the Olympics he said he had watched, noting: “It pleasantly surprised me. There were more people at the golf event than there was at the athletics, so it was good to see. It really was.”
While many of his fellow competitors — including DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Jon Rahm — grabbed the multimillions offered by LIV Golf, McIlroy became the leading defender of the PGA Tour.
It’s easy to point out that McIlroy is nearly as rich as a Saudi sheikh, but the players who took the money were not exactly on welfare. Mickelson even admitted to author Alan Shipnuck that the Saudis were “scary motherf---ers” and took their money anyhow.
In a sports world where “show me the money” has become the guiding principle for most, McIlroy has made plenty but has always stood for more than that. He has admitted mistakes and has nearly always stood up to tough questioning.
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The U.S. Open was a glaring exception. Last week, he met with the media before the Scottish Open, his first public appearance since Pinehurst. He was typical Rory, talking about how difficult the loss was to take and how he needed to get away from the game for a couple of weeks. He insisted that he still believed he would win more majors and that he had plenty of good golf ahead of him.
He also turned down the chance to apologize to the media for vanishing from that parking lot. “No offense; you guys were the least of my worries at that point,” he said.
He gets a mulligan there. My guess is he will show up to talk post-round at this week’s British Open, regardless of the outcome.
Here’s the bottom line on McIlroy: He’s a great player and an outstanding person. He’s also human — he filed for divorce from his wife, Erica, in May before the couple reconciled.
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And he’s a truth-teller, which many people in sports find uncomfortable. In 2010, when he first qualified to play in the Ryder Cup, he told the media that he was happy to make the team but that the Ryder Cup really was just an exhibition and his main goal in golf was to win majors. The European media went ballistic.
A few years later, I asked McIlroy about it. He laughed and said he was never more wrong in his life.
“It took me about 15 minutes after I got to Wales to know I’d been wrong,” he said. “… Looking back, what I said initially was selfish. I’m an only child, and since I was a kid, my golf was the most important thing in my world. I had to readjust my thinking to understand that wasn’t true.”
He sat back in his chair and smiled. “Can you imagine that — a golfer being selfish?”
Most in the media and the public prefer platitudes rather than the truth because they’re often easier to take. Once, when we were discussing that, McIlroy told me: “I hope I don’t get tired of all the criticism and go the easy way and say everything and everyone is great. That’s not me, but sometimes I do think about it.”
I hope he never reaches that point. And while I was disappointed at Pinehurst by both his loss and his post-round behavior, I’m over it.
No athlete has ever deserved a mulligan more.
