Clock is now ticking for McIlroy in battle with the

THIS year’s sparkling quartet of major championships created a youthful moment of golf history to provoke a sense of foreboding among the legion of admirers of the luckless Rory McIlroy. While they’re still wondering how the Northern Irishman didn’t end his eightyear major drought while doing little wrong when in contention at all four, here’s a portentous stat that suggests things will not be getting any easier. For the first time in a calendar year, all four major winners were in their 20s. Furthermore, since the Masters began in 1934, we’re on an unprecedented run of six different winners in a row all younger than 30. To complete the picture, their number do not include Jordan Spieth, Cameron Young, Sam Burns or Will Zalatoris. In other words, it’s not just one or two outstanding young hot-shots gunning for McIlroy, who will be a month shy of his 34th birthday by the time the next major is played. It’s a veritable playground of them and at least a couple are bound to have their A games when each of the four big ones comes around. All six majors in this amazing streak were won fearlessly by men comfortably younger than McIlroy, and none of them look like one-major wonders. From Jon Rahm at the US Open last year to Cam Smith on Sunday, taking in Collin Morikawa (2021 Open), Scottie Scheffler (Masters), Justin Thomas (USPGA) and Matt Fitzpatrick (US Open), here were a dazzling collection of performances with not even the hint of a choke in sight. Then there’s Young, Burns and Zalatoris who, like Scheffler and Morikawa, are all aged just 25. This is Young’s rookie season and he finished tied third at the PGA and runner-up on Sunday. Burns has won three times on the PGA Tour this season. Zalatoris has finished runner-up in each of the three American majors — and he’s only played ten majors in total. This is why McIlroy simply cannot afford hard-luck stories, even though Sunday was clearly one of them. Look at the sorry statistics and weep. He is the only known player to lead a major after 54 holes, hit all 18 greens in regulation in the final round — and yet not win. He is also only the third player in the last half century to finish in the top eight in all four majors in the same season and not win one. Resilience has been a badly overlooked quality of McIlroy’s throughout his career and he is going to need to show it once again to overcome this collective anti-climax. Rickie Fowler actually finished in the top five in all four Grand Slam events in 2014 — and look what’s happened to him. At the same age as Rory, he wasn’t even in the starting line-up at St Andrews. Seen from a glass half-full perspective, though, this was clearly a year of considerable progress for McIlroy (right), who had barely been in contention in a major since his last success — and looked to be suffering from demons at most of them. The spectacular final round 64 at the Masters in April, while never seriously threatening Scheffler, appeared to restore belief. Sure, there were more than one or two infuriating shots at the PGA that undid him eventually, but he’s not a robot. As for Sunday, you’d have needed a heart of stone not to feel for him as countless