Rory McIlroy And The Next Major Crusade

Right, this time I would clear the path to Rory’s long lost major — by not watching the final round of this year’s US Open. At the ludicrously exclusive Los Angeles Country Club — initiation fees starting at $250,000 and annual dues of $20,000 to $30,000.

Besides, he wasn’t teeing off until after 10.30pm Irish time. 

Would have watched it if I was in the teeniest bit confident, but I wasn’t.

Which is why, pathetically, I had resorted to the old unwatched kettle trick to try and finally get him over the line for another major — in truth, a barely more sophisticated method than the old kids holding their hands over their ears and going ‘Na,na,na, can’t hear you’ ploy.

Still only 34 now but you have to go all the way back to the USPGA in 2014 for Rory McIlroy’s last major. 

After his victory on the Jack Nicklaus-designed Valhalla Golf Club, the Golden Bear himself said of the wunderkind: 

“Rory is an unbelievable talent. I think Rory has an opportunity to win 15 or 20 majors or whatever he wants to do if he wants to keep playing. I love his swing.”

That was his fourth Big One already. And not another one since.

 A list as long as your arm and mine of staggering achievements before and since  — world number one, how many times now? PGA and European Tour wins galore, PGA Tour and European Tour player of the year and leading money winner in both multiple times, Race to Dubai winner … on and on. Ryder Cups, glittering amateur career too. 

If only all our failures could be so magnificent: one of the greatest exponents  — ever — of a game played by billions, a 5ft9in slip of a man from a speck of  a town in a wind-blown corner of a historically tormented, political basket-case of a country, shivering on the edge of a dark, cantankerous ocean. 

Yes, since McIlroy last picked up a Big One, Brooks ‘LIV for today’ Koepka had won five of the things (three USPGA and two US Opens), and the Roll Of Honour included everyone from a 50 year old Phil Mickelson, in the 2021 USPGA at Kiawah Island to be the oldest ever major winner, to one-off wonders like Danny Willett (US Masters  2016) and even Rory’s old amateur mucker Shane Lowry (British Open 2019, at Portrush)

And so, I snapped awake … 4.20am, my phone blinked at me … and out on to the landing to catch the wifi signal.

Only the cold, black and white report words to go on: 

‘This year’s US Open winner is … 

Wyndham Clark!’ 

Beating McIlroy by ONE shot.

Another major missed out on — so let’s get ready for the all-too-familiar brickbats — bottler, bluffer, flat track bully … failure.

Damn you, Wyndham Clark, you 29 year old from Denver, Colorado I genuinely had never really heard of until this week. You only won your first PGA Tour title last month, for God’s sake, the Wells Bloody Farrago … sorry, The Wells Fargo, at Quail Hollow, North Carolina.

This time Rory hit one birdie and one bogey in a level par final round 70, to Clark’s birdie-bogey strewn 69.

An indicator, perhaps, that one of the two was really going for it, taking risks … and it wasn’t Rory.

So McIlroy hadn’t exploded, or timed a final day charge to fall just short. He hadn’t collapsed, just couldn’t put the pressure on, a couple of ropey shots proved costly — and his putter went colder than a well digger’s ass.

Hence, as the morning’s Irish Independent newspaper headline reminded him: ‘Rory McIlroy’s major drought now stands at 8 years, 10 months and 4 days’ …

Would he retreat now, like he did after missing the cut at the US Masters, heart-broken, skipping a contracted tournament in order to lick his wounds in his $10m mansion in Jupiter, 85 miles north of Miami, Florida?

From which he emerged, yet again, to show up and go for it one more time, the boy from Holywood hoping for a Hollywood ending in LA itself. 

The smiling, affable, patently decent Rory McIlroy, unofficial spokesman for the US Tour, who let him be the articulate voice of resistance to the LIV barbarians — and then left him swinging when they went round the back to let the sheikh-books in.

And so, deserting him or staying up late and soaring with every sweet shot,  bouncing along behind every happy Rory booming drive, or sinking with every lipped out clutch putt: what difference?

Is that what gave Clark the impetus to hang in there — the feeling that Rory would crack, and not him?

For this alone, one would love Rory to stare down that cold sweat-inducing, putt-missing terror, and finally beat it when it most matters. In Augusta, LA, Troon or wherever the sink their winning putts, and rejoin the immortal names etched upon the famous trophy.

Oh, to once again glimpse the Young Rory of The Wild Curling Locks —  long since pruned like the Masters foliage —  and the unsculpted body. The swashbuckling prince of the fairways, mirroring every shot with his posture and his stride.

There’s just something about Rory McIlroy that makes it really hurt when he lips out or crashes on another major course.

He is still one of those stars that are at the heart of any spectator sports’s appeal: you care about them, and we entrust them with our dreams and invest in them our desires for vicarious glory.

Come on Rory, you can still do it.