“I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of what he’s achieved since then,” said fellow Northern Irishman David Feherty. “He was a real class act.”
Eight weeks later, he won his first major title, winning the U.S. Open at Congressional by eight shots. By the age of 25, he had already won four majors: two PGA Championships, the British Open and this U.S. Open.
Now, cast your mind back to last month’s U.S. Open. On Sunday night, he took a two-shot lead on the 15th hole at Pinehurst, playing sublime golf. It looked like 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 the 16th and 18th, and lost to Bryson DeChambeau by one shot.
This wasn’t a 21-year-old kid who knew he had a much better chance. This was a 35-year-old who had been agonizingly close for the last 10 years, but hadn’t managed to cross the finish line. And then he fell in the final meters, just before the finish line.
This time, McIlroy couldn’t help himself. After watching DeChambeau sink his final, deciding putt, he rushed off the course, without congratulating the winner, refusing to speak to NBC or the media and leaving the Pinehurst parking lot in a wheelchair.
Was that understandable under the circumstances? 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, it was disappointing because it was so UN-Rory.
For a long time, he has been one of those rare athletes who truly lives by the most famous words of Rudyard Kipling’s most famous poem: “If you can face triumph and disaster and treat both impostors alike…”
McIlroy has done this throughout his career, always with honesty. He has never been one to offer platitudes. When he joined many top players in skipping the 2016 Olympics – Zika being the excuse du jour – he was asked if he would agree to play in the Tokyo 2016 Olympics. watch “The Olympics.” “Probably the events like track and field, swimming, diving, the things that matter,” he replied.
He was savaged by the European media and (surprise) NBC for this comment. After the Olympics, he said he had “I was pleasantly surprised. There were more people at the golf event than the track and field event, so it was nice to see that. It really was,” he added.
While several of his competitors — including DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Jon Rahm — have grabbed the millions on offer from LIV Golf, McIlroy has become the PGA Tour’s leading advocate.
It’s easy to point out that McIlroy is almost as rich as a Saudi sheikh, but the players who took the money weren’t exactly welfare recipients. Mickelson even admitted to author Alan Shipnuck that the Saudis were “creepy sons of b****s” and took their money anyway.
In a sports world where “show me the money” has become the guiding principle for most, McIlroy has made a lot of money but has always held values that go beyond that. He has admitted his mistakes and has almost always withstood tough questioning.
The US Open was a glaring exception. Last week, he met the media ahead of the Scottish Open, his first public appearance since Pinehurst. He displayed typical Rory poise, explaining how hard the loss had been to take and that he needed to step away from the game for a few weeks. He insisted that he still believed he would win more majors and that he had plenty of good matches ahead of him.
He also refused to apologize to the media for disappearing from the parking lot. “Don’t take this the wrong way, you were the least of my worries at that time,” he said.
He gets a mulligan there. I bet he’ll show up to speak after the round at this week’s British Open, regardless of the outcome.
Here’s the thing about McIlroy: He’s a great player and a great person. He’s also a great human being: He filed for divorce from his wife, Erica, in May, before the couple reconciled.
And he tells the truth, which makes many sportsmen uncomfortable. In 2010, when he qualified for the Ryder Cup, he told the media that he was happy to be part of the team, but that the Ryder Cup was really just an exhibition and that his main goal in golf was to win major tournaments. The European media went wild.
A few years later, I asked McIlroy about it. He laughed and said he had never been more wrong in his life.
“It took me about 15 minutes after I arrived in Wales to realise I was wrong,” he said. “… In hindsight, what I said at the beginning was selfish. I’m an only child, and as a child, 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? Can a golfer be selfish?”
Most media outlets and the public prefer platitudes to truth because they are often easier to accept. One day, as we were discussing this, McIlroy told me, “I hope I don’t get tired of all this criticism and take the easy way out and say that everyone is great. I’m not, but I think about it sometimes.”
I hope he never gets to that point. And even though I was disappointed at Pinehurst by his loss and his behavior after the round, I’m done with that.
No athlete has ever deserved a mulligan more.
