McIlroy aims for 3rd PGA title
2-time PGA Championship winner doesn’t hesitate to speak his mind
At age 27, Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy already has won four major championships, and this week at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J., he’ll be in pursuit of his third PGA Championship. Although now more cautious with the media, McIlroy still has plenty to say about a lot of topics. If anything, the man is far more interesting than the kid ever was.
SPRINGFIELD, N.J. — The transformation of Rory McIlroy has happened before our eyes.
When the Northern Irishman won the first of his four major championships in the 2011 U.S. Open, he was a round-faced lad with that mop of curly brown hair that spilled out of his cap. His pants were baggy and too long. His shirts were blousy. His frame wasn’t soft, though it lacked definition.
Around the media, McIlroy was mostly lighthearted and extraordinarily open for a 22-year-old. Being a professional seemed like one wondrous moment after another for him.
The 27-year-old McIlroy, going for a third victory in the PGA Championship this week at Baltusrol Golf Club, seems truly grown up in every way. His face now features a chiseled jaw line, more obvious because of his short-cropped hair. His tight shirts cling to shoulders and biceps, making him look not like a golfer but an athlete.
McIlroy still smiles on occasion for gathered reporters, but not nearly as much. There’s a certain wariness now, and maybe a weariness, too. He’s heard most of the questions before.
Yet McIlroy still has something to say. If anything, the man is far more interesting than the kid ever was.
That was clearer than ever two weeks ago before the British Open at Troon. As Nick Faldo pointed out last week in a conference call, the goal for most players is to bore the British tabloid press with pat answers and little insight. Fewer headlines that way. Faldo was the master at this. So was Tiger Woods.
It seemed as if McIlroy was begging to be a punching bag. He snubbed golf in the Olympics, exposed golf’s drug testing as weak, and resisted the contention that he and his fellow young players should be responsible for “growing the game.”
All in the span of 20 minutes. In the room, he sounded like a guy who needed to get a few things off his chest and wasn’t afraid to vent.
“I think he’s a breath of fresh air,” said Dottie Pepper, the former LPGA player who is working her first PGA as an on-course commentator and wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. “He walks in there and tells it like it is — as he believes it, feels it.
“What we saw last week was a player who had been poked and poked and poked. … Is it fair to criticize him for what he says? I think you hold him accountable. But I think it’s wonderful that you have a guy in there who’s not bound by what he’s supposed to say, or what he’s programmed to say.”
McIlroy has to listen to inane questions like the one posed at the British Open that suggested he was the “fourth Beatle” next to Jason Day, Dustin Johnson and Jordan Spieth.
“First time I’ve ever been compared to the Beatles,” McIlroy responded.
McIlroy captured the Irish Open in spectacular fashion in May for the 20th worldwide win of his pro career, and though he missed the cut in the U.S. Open, he tied for 10th in the Masters and fifth in the British Open.
He’s finished third once and fourth three times this season in the U.S., which says a lot about how things have gone. He’s been close, but hardly in the mix deep into Sundays.
McIlroy just may be in a different place, engaged to be married but not the family man that Day is or the more carefree Spieth going on beach vacations with buddies.
Though McIlroy didn’t win at Troon, all those headlines hardly seemed to dissuade him from speaking up.
“I’ve spent seven years trying to please everyone,” he said, “and I figured out that I can’t really do that, so I may as well be true to myself.”