There has always the suggestion that Rory McIlroy, for all his brilliance on the golf course, has never fully adjusted to the intense media gaze that comes with looking like the natural successor to Tiger Woods.
Polite, thoughtful and courteous, McIlroy has done well to cultivate an image of himself as a likeable King, albeit a reluctant one. When Woods was gleefully winning Major championships at a canter, he not only welcomed the attention – he thrived on it. Not content with merely being the most effective frontrunner the sport has ever seen, Woods wanted to control the media narratives as much as controlling his own golf ball.
Up until his spectacular fall from grace, Woods succeeded. Although he remained detached and terse in the vast majority of his dealings with the press, Woods was still hailed as probably the greatest sportsman of his generation, exalted to the levels of Michael Jordan and Serena Williams. Although he wasn’t engaging, his aura of sheer superiority was undeniable.
McIlroy, however, has never been quite as consummate in manipulating his relationship with the media. Ahead of his Ryder Cup debut at Celtic Manor in 2010, the Irishman sparked furore by labelling the event as an ‘exhibition’ and claiming that ‘in the grand scheme of things it’s not that important to me.’ Woods, golf’s great individual, may not have relished competing as part of the USA’s team in the Ryder Cup as much as closing out a Major, but he was shrewd to never admit as much.
Yes, McIlroy’s quest for greatness has been far less serene. Thanks to his Tiger-esque dominance in winning the 2011 US Open by eight strokes, he was anointed the natural heir to Woods’s throne. He was 22, full of ambition and in possession of a marvellous swing, at once powerful and graceful. At that point, it looked as though McIlroy would ascend to the top of golf and not budge for quite some time. There was even talk of matching Woods’s haul of 14 Majors.
And yes, although he has clinched four of them and reached the world rankings’ summit, McIlroy is now 28, and the prevailing opinion is that he has touched greatness without ever fully achieving it.
He now finds himself at an interesting crossroads. Last September, he captured the FedExCup with a flash of sheer showmanship at the Tour Championship. He is yet to win since then. The rest of the season, including the PGA Championship and the FedExCup playoffs offer him plenty of opportunities to re-enter the winners’ enclosure.
2017 has been a trying year for him professionally. He began the year by losing in a playoff for the South African open to Graeme Storm. Then his body began giving him bigger problems than his putting. He missed all of February due to stress fractures in his ribs. That injury proved hard to shake. It flared up at the Players Championship, forcing him to withdraw from the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth in May.
He’s also had to factor in an equipment change, a round with Donald Trump and his wedding – not all strictly professional, but they’ve contributed to a hectic few months.
His return from injury earlier this season at the US Open proved a false dawn, missing the cut by four shots despite a late second-round flourish. That underwhelming performance at Erin Hills prompted Steve Elkington, a one-time Major champion and apparent keyboard warrior, to claim that McIlroy was ‘bored’ with golf.
His swift response to the dissenting, curmudgeonly voice was lauded by many, but it did little to improve to McIlroy’s game. After a tie for 17th at the Travelers Championship, McIlroy missed the cut at the Irish and Scottish Opens. Then, by the time he arrived on Royal Birkdale’s 7th tee already five-over par for his opening round at The Open, you could almost hear Elkington ecstatically bashing proclamations of McIlroy’s demise onto his computer.
It was at that point that McIlroy, thanks to few choice words from caddie JP Fitzgerald, stood up to be accounted for, clawing his way back to within sight of Jordan Spieth after 36 holes. Of course, Spieth – a player who looks even more equipped than McIlroy to become golf’s dominant figure – avoided a meltdown of his own on Sunday to clinch his first Claret Jug.
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For McIlroy, a few errand shots meant he had to be content with a T4 finish. His game may be far from working at optimum efficiency in every department, but there was much encouragement to be drawn from the 66 holes after the opening six.
It came as much of a surprise, then, to read on Monday morning that he had parted ways with longtime caddie JP Fitzgerald, the very man he credited for spurring a turnaround in fortunes at Birkdale. It’s important to remember that changing caddies is far from irregular, even among golf’s elite players, yet both the timing of the news – and the way in which it broke – seemed curious.
Three days prior to the WGC Bridgestone Invitational, a tournament McIlroy has won before and hopes will stage a triumphant return to form, he faces questions over a major change in personnel, something which could prove burdensome by the time he has struck a ball on Thursday.
With McIlroy supposedly deeming it necessary to make such a dramatic change mid-season, it will be interesting to see how the rest of his season pans out. Not only does he seem to be battling his body, mind, swing and a surging Spieth among other things, he must now endeavour to silence critics of this shake-up by playing with the freedom, imagination and conviction that helped form the basis of his tremendously successful nine-year partnership with Fitzgerald.
