Rory gets emotional about Ryder Cup
RORY MCILROY says there are 164 reasons why playing for Europe makes him emotional. That is the number of players who have represented the continent in the Ryder Cup, and a video championing the precedents was shown to this year’s dozen and plucked the heartstrings. “To put it in context 570 people have been into space,” McIlroy said. “I think over 5,000 have climbed Everest and 225 have won a men’s major. When you break it down, it’s a pretty small group.”
There are plenty of people who think all this stuff is fluff and that Ryder Cup captaincy, as a whole, is a myth. Telling the European team they are special by means of a soaring soundtrack and high production values is fine and dandy, but you still have to sink putts. Emotional, yes, but this is McIlroy versus Jordan Spieth rather than Kramer versus Kramer.
This year Padraig Harrington, Europe’s captain, has given his players their chronological numbers in the timeline so McIlroy will proudly wear No 144 on his bag, but he needs no help in getting the Ryder Cup. Indeed, his bigger problem is bottling the emotion and stopping it spilling out as it did in his own broadscreen drama against Patrick Reed in 2016. That Sunday singles was both a golf match and a slug-fest, with birdies, eagles and McIlroy cupping a hand to his ear and exploding: “F***ing come on, I can’t hear you!” It was brilliant theatre but McIlroy lost.
“I think the most animated I’ve been in my career has been at the Ryder Cup,” he said in a cold, windswept tent on the edge of the 18th by Lake Michigan. “It just brings something out of you that you don’t get playing individually. There’s something more there when you’re playing as part of a team and everything you do doesn’t just affect you, but affects the other 11 players, the captains and the vice-captains.”
It can get too much. McIlroy, 32, recently talked of being jaded and he cannot afford to let another partisan crowd affect him. “I will certainly try not to be as animated and I’ll try to conserve some energy.”