Caddie’s frank comment fires up McIlroy
The first rule for a caddie is to know when to speak, and when to keep one’s counsel.
JP Fitzgerald, Rory McIlroy’s dutiful sidekick, understood this only too well as the pair stood on the sixth tee here, his man having shipped four strokes in five holes and starting to display the body language of the vanquished. “He said to me, ‘ you’re Rory McIlroy, what the f *** are you doing?’,” the man of the hour reflected last night, with a grin.
“At that point, I just mumbled and replied, ‘ yeah, whatever’. But it definitely helped. He reminded me who I was, what I was capable of.”
Even by McIlroy’s standards of sorcery, the ensuing comeback was astonishing. Prior to Fitzgerald’s intervention, he had exuded a woebegone air, rubbing his eyes and realising this was not quite as he planned it.
One moment, he had been urging punters to pile on him at pre- Open odds of 20- 1, a mischievous gleam in his eye suggesting he knew more than the market. The next, he was scrambling to drop just one stroke at the first after his ball plunged deep into the fescue. The grisly tailspin that ensued made it look for all the world as if his prospects of a fifth major title had gone in 60 minutes.
Thank his trusty bag- man, then, for helping him restore contact with his true self. For this was a day when McIlroy blew as hot and cold as the swirling Birkdale breeze. He is not known for his cussed rearguard actions in adversity, but somehow, despite an hour of torment, he turned a potential 78 or worse into a 71 that kept him at the beating heart of this championship.
It was a strange, lopsided scorecard — 39 strokes out, 32 strokes in — but the most celebrated players can take such setbacks in their stride. Tiger Woods shot 40 for his front nine on the first day of the 1997 Masters and 30 for the back, and he ended up winning the tournament by 12. Fittingly, McIlroy regarded his own position, just six behind the leaders, with supreme nonchalance. “I was four over through three holes in Boston last year and I won there,” he shrugged. “I’ve done it before.”