The Return Of Rory
More than five long years may have passed since Rory Mcilroy last tasted victory in any major...
More than five long years may have passed since Rory Mcilroy last tasted victory in any major, but 2019 has proved to be a very fruitful 12 months for the amiable Irishman. John Huggan crunches his numbers and finds many reasons for optimism.
Let’s not get too excited. Simple logic tells us that history is unlikely to anoint 2019 as the best-ever year of Rory Mcilroy’s already spectacular career. Victories in both the Open Championship and the US PGA Championship five years ago automatically make 2014 the most successful of the Northern Irishman’s professional life (so far), even before he picked up a World Golf Championship title and the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, the biggest event on the secondbiggest tour. And 2012 – four PGA Tour victories including a major title – wasn’t too shabby either.
However, while 2019 turned out to be the fifth major-less year in succession for the now 30-year old, it may have come with a broader significance. Never the most consistent performer, Mcilroy’s extraordinary week-to-week level of performance during the 2018-19 PGA Tour season – 14 top-10 finishes from 19 starts – hinted at a new maturity within the most charismatic and enigmatic member of golf’s elite.
“Rory is without doubt the most talented hand/eye-coordinated golfer I have ever seen,” says swing coach Pete Cowen, who has coached a number of major champions. “He was like that as a kid. Like a magician. But, by definition, a hand/ eye-coordinated player can be unbelievably brilliant or very average depending on the week. If he gets it all together he wins by 10; if not, he goes back into the pack.”
Not so much last year though. Yes, there were the ‘usual’ victories at The Players Championship, the Canadian Open and the ridiculously lucrative Fedex Cup. But outside of the weeks in which he was unplayable even for the likes of Brooks Koepka, Justin Thomas and Dustin Johnson, Mcilroy showed himself well able to at least contend almost every time he teed-up.
Okay, so he didn’t always follow through when in a position to strike. More than once on the final day he disappointed. But no one else at the sharp end of the world rankings – not even Koepka – can claim such excellence. No more can Mcilroy be accused of lacking fortitude at times when his beautifully fluid action is mis-firing. His worst golf – the traditional measure of a player’s quality – has now improved almost beyond all measure.
“It’s been a great year,” he says. “I look at all aspects of my game. I’ve been ‘big’ on the stats for the last couple of years. I drove the ball better than anyone in the world. My iron play improved. My short game improved. And my putting improved. I’m getting better as a golfer. Which is all you can try to do.”
Indeed, Mcilroy’s numbers over the last year make extraordinary reading. A sample: if we throw in the $15m bonus that came with that Fedex victory, the (still) four-time major champion earned $17,704 for every hole he completed in his 19 starts.
In the ‘strokes gained’ category, Mcilroy was first – 2.55 shots better than the field and, possibly more to the point, 1.18 better than Koepka (albeit figures from the Masters and the Open Championship are not part of that
“In strokes gained Mcilroy was 2.55 shots ahead of the field and 1.18 in front of brooks koepka.”
stat). He was also peerless in ‘strokes gained off the tee’ and ‘strokes gained to the green’.
Mcilroy’s stroke average of 69.057 was the lowest on tour and won him, for the third time, the prestigious Vardon Trophy. While Koepka retained the world number-one spot at the end of the PGA Tour season, it was Mcilroy who averaged most points per event – 19.58. And only three times did Mcilroy shoot a score higher than 72.
Impressive stuff. But, as ever in golf, nothing is ever perfect. As Lee Trevino once memorably contended: “God didn’t give any of us everything.” And Mcilroy is no different. Elsewhere in the mountain of statistics produced by the PGA Tour, chinks appear in the formidable armoury that is his all-round game. By way of example, while he is one of the longest drivers on tour – second in distance – Mcilroy is a lowly 104th in accuracy off the tee. That, of course, is relatively unimportant in an era when length and power have all but overwhelmed any need for precision.
“Rory is the Greg Norman of this era in terms of the advantage he has over the others with his driver,” confirms former European Tour player Mike Clayton.
Oddly, he is third on tour when putting from five feet but 173rd from four feet. In putts per round he averaged 28.38 to sit a respectable 14th. “All Rory ever has to do is let the putter go back fully,” says former US PGA champion Dave Stockton. “Then he can go through smoother and roll the ball better. That gives him the proper level of acceleration through impact without him having to think about it consciously. When he gets that right, he has great feel for the tempo and pace of putts.”
But here’s the thing. The biggest issue – one that has been well-publicised and acknowledged by Mcilroy – continues to be his wedge play. Top on tour when it comes to approach shots from 175-200 yards, Mcilroy is ranked only 86th from 100-125 yards and a subterranean 181st from 75-100.
If he were to improve in what is euphemistically labelled ‘scoring range’ one can only imagine how many tournaments and majors he might win.
“I’ve a theory about Rory’s wedge play,” says renowned swing coach Peter Kostis. “I don’t think this is only a swing issue. I’ve looked in his bag. I’ve looked at his wedges. In my opinion those clubs are too upright for him. As a consequence, because of this lie angle, he is always going to have a tendency to hit a pull-draw. Everything he does in his swing is to avoid that shot. His misses are short-right and long-left.
“Watch Rory through impact and you can see he just isn’t leaning the shaft forward enough to control the trajectory on his wedge shots. Not consistently anyway. His shaft is too close to 90º at impact. But, if he did make the proper swing and create more shaft lean, the ball would go left, because of the lie angle.
“Look at how he sets up to the ball with his longer clubs. His hands are relatively low at address. But he can’t do that with the
wedges because those clubs naturally set his hands higher.”
But we are nit-picking, a common occurrence when it comes to Mcilroy.
On any given week
Like it or not – and sometimes he understandably does not – the Belfast Boy is held to a higher standard than anyone else in the game, such is the extent of his obvious talent. Any irritation is usually fleeting though. The product of staunchly working-class parents who worked a multitude of jobs to give their only son every chance of making it in golf, Mcilroy is immensely amiable and approachable and, despite the riches that have come his way so early in life, refreshingly modest. He knows that, despite his precocious physical talents, his all-round game remains a work in progress.
Which is a sobering thought, at least for his competition. As we saw often enough this year, the old line still holds true: if everyone produces their best stuff in any given week, Mcilroy wins. He is the best of the best and, when performing at that exalted level, simply irresistible.
Nor is his dedication to the task in doubt. When the Holywood professional Michael Bannon – still Mcilroy’s coach – decided that, at age 11, his young charge should weaken what was a dangerously strong left-hand grip, the young Rory went at it with a vengeance.
His mother Rosie tells the story of looking into her son’s bedroom when he was in the midst of applying Bannon’s latest advice. There he was, fast asleep, his arms outside the bedcovers and his hands resolutely placed on a club in a perfectly neutral position. It is a work ethic that has stayed with him. An illustration.
One week before the season-sending Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta, a journalist was prowling the range on the eve of the BMW Championship in Chicago. With his pick of the world’s best to watch and study, he paid attention to only one. Hitting a mixture of drivers and wedges – he was clearly working on distance control with the lofted clubs – Mcilroy put on a seemingly effortless display, combining both power and precision. It was spellbinding stuff, a strong hint of the top-form in his near future, and delivered with the sort
“His game remains a work in progress – a sobering thought for his rivals.”
of insouciant casualness bequeathed only to the truly gifted.
“I am a huge fan of Rory’s swing,” says Kostis. “When you watch him you get the feeling that everything about him is reacting to the clubhead. He’s cocking and swinging the club to the top, then releasing the clubhead through impact. His body, while propelling the club, is subservient to his feel for the clubhead.”
What is also unarguable is that this has been one of Rory’s best years on tour in terms of mechanics – in chipping, putting, driving, iron play. All of those aspects of his game were really good and, one can reasonably argue, the best of his career. The big downside was his performance in the majors. If he had won one major we would be talking about this being a record year for Rory. But because he didn’t win one, it’s going to be only a very, very good year.
“Some weeks you are going to play better than others,” says Mcilroy. “The Players was a big week for me. The Tour Championship was a big win. I played my best goif of the year at the Canadian Open, the week before the US Open. Which is a major. People will look at my year and ask why I didn’t play better at those. Maybe it was preparation or a little different mindset going on then. But I feel like if I can keep playing the way I am and keep doing the things that I’m doing, sooner or later I’ll get another one of those. And all the noise will go away.
“Too much emphasis is put on the majors. Making them the only things that matter is a dangerous narrative to run with.”
Within that, the biggest disappointment came at Royal Portrush in the Open Championship. Playing in his homeland in front of his ain folk, Mcilroy missed the cut by a shot, shooting rounds of 79-65. During that disastrous opening round he hit his opening tee-shot out-of-bounds and started with a quadruple-bogey eight. Later, on the 15th, he carelessly missed a tap-in for bogey, his mind still on the par-putt he had just misread. Then he finished with a triple-bogey seven on the 18th.
And yet. Despite all of the above, Mcilroy was the star of the show on day two. The 65 he shot contained all of the elements that make him the most compelling figure in the game to watch. Few golfers have ever combined such power and such grace so effortlessly. (Maybe only Sam Snead is a rival in that respect). In the end though, his was glorious failure squared.
“There is a fine line between not trying hard enough and trying too hard,” says Kostis. “That’s what I saw in Rory at the majors, especially at Royal Portrush. I have mixed emotions about what happened to Rory there. The internal out-of-bounds on the first hole was bullsh*t. And, as a consequence, the eight with which he started ultimately cost him the chance to compete. Okay, he hit a bad shot. But if he’s able to play from where his ball finished and make bogey, no real harm would have been done and he’d have been around for the weekend. And who knows what could have happened.
“It is a measure of how special he is that he contributed so much to that event, despite only being around for two days. I, like everyone else, couldn’t take my eyes off him on the Friday evening. To his credit, he played some brilliant golf. But all that did was make me more frustrated. His game was clearly there. But he didn’t have control of his
“Rory wants the majors to be just any other week. That’s a big mistake.”
emotional state of mind on the Thursday. He was under an enormous amount of pressure – self-inflicted or not – and he didn’t handle it as well as he could have.”
It was a huge disappointment, one graphically reflected in Mcilroy’s emotional reaction to the knowledge that he would not be around for the weekend. It surely did not help either that Koepka, the man emerging as his biggest rival in the game, played so well in the biggest events this year. With his T4 finish at Portrush, the 29-year-old Floridian became only the fourth man in history – after Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Jordan
Spieth – to finish in the top four at all four majors in a calendar year.
“Rory comes into every major wanting to pretend that every week is the same,” says former US PGA champion Paul Azinger. “But they’re not. I wish he would take it all head-on. He wants it so badly. And sometimes you can want something too much. Right now at least, Koepka is the best at redirecting himself out of these sorts of pressure situations.”
Azinger has a point. But Rory has encountered adversity in majors before and emerged with a sense of perspective owned by few. Back in 2011, right after he shot a final round of 80 in the Masters – and having just missed a shortish putt – Mcilroy endearingly handed the offending ball to a child. And minutes after that, a 21-year old who had surely had the worst day of his sporting life proved himself a mature individual, one well able to put mere sport into appropriate context. At a time when Rory must have wanted only to exit asap, a succession of talking heads with microphones got straight and honest and polite and thoughtful answers to their routinely inane inquiries.
So it was that, in the immediate aftermath of Mcilroy’s Fedex victory, he was honest enough to acknowledge Koepka’s apparently inscrutable ability to play well no matter what is going on around him. Under pressure, the American is the classic pokerface, his score all but impossible to discern from his demeanour and expression. In that way, Mcilroy said, he “wanted to be more like Brooks”.
The player of the year
America obsessed over just who deserved to be hailed as ‘player of the year’. No account will, of course, be taken of anything that took place outside the US of A. But the PGA Tour, in an act filled with irony, hinted that the honour should go to Mcilroy. For an organisation without influence in any of the game’s five biggest events – the majors and the Ryder Cup – winning the Players and the Fedex Cup is an irresistibly parochial combination of successes.
Many thought Koepka was likely get the nod from his fellow PGA Tour players. Major victories have long been the gold standard when determining such awards. Back in 1998, Mark O’meara’s wins in the Masters and the Open were deemed superior to David Duval’s four tour victories and world number-one status.
Now player-of-the-year, Mcilroy can look back on 2019 as a year in which he got better, physically and mentally. He is headed wherever his ambition, dedication and discipline want to take him.
And his best golf, amazingly enough, is likely still in his future. It is a mouthwatering prospect.