Evidence of Rory McIlroy’s exalted status can arrive when you least expect. Ask him, for example, if anyone out of the ordinary got in touch in the aftermath of his excruciating conclusion to the US Open. McIlroy does not disappoint.
“Rafa Nadal and Michael Jordan,” he says. “Two of the most unbelievable competitors that have ever been in sport. MJ was maybe the first person to text me after I missed the putt on the 18th but both of them got in touch very, very quickly.
“They just told me to keep going. MJ reminded me of how many game-winning shots he missed. Really nice.”
Nadal and Jordan can therefore be counted among those who watched through their fingers as McIlroy conceded the third major of the year to Bryson DeChambeau. McIlroy bogeyed three of the last four holes at Pinehurst. A fifth major title and first since 2014 had been within his grasp; it slipped in circumstances many feared would define this part of his career.
McIlroy begs to differ and his tone is noticeably upbeat. “Was it a great opportunity to win a major? Absolutely,” he says. “It hurt and in the moment it was tough, terrible.
“I’d say people would be surprised to see how quickly I got over it and moved on.” He has looked back on “what I needed to watch” from television coverage. That means the good and the bad.
None of this is to suggest the 35-year-old denies commentators the right to assess what happened. Dogs in the street have a view on what McIlroy should have done differently as DeChambeau lurked. He has just long since conditioned himself not to heed the noise. “I can’t,” he says. “I can’t pay attention to that.
“Maybe the one drawback from me not talking [to media] afterwards was that you got three weeks of speculation. ‘He should have done this, should have done that but we will never know because he didn’t say.’
“I trust the people around me. I don’t need to go looking for external counsel. If the tournament ended after 68 holes, people would be calling me the best golfer in the world.”
And this in a sport where winning percentages are desperately low by design. “You have to be an eternal optimist,” McIlroy says. “Say you play 25 events a year and win three of those. You are one of the best players in history. We lose way more than we win.
“Yes, I was in a great winning position and should have won but it’s not the first time I have let something slip away. It’s probably not going to be the last. You have to look at it on the continuum. It was tough but it is one tournament.
“I play 23-25 per year. You have to keep going. The great thing about this game is you have an opportunity to get back on the horse right after a tough loss. You try to learn from it and do better next time.”
McIlroy pinpoints process as one basis for what went wrong. It is a dull theory but a salient one. “I was too aware of what was happening behind me,” he says. Discussions with Bob Rotella, who works on McIlroy’s mindset, raised another issue. “My pre-shot routine got a little long but it wasn’t just that week,” McIlroy says. “I had been feeling that for a while. You will see that before the US Open. In Canada or at Quail Hollow, I was starting to take extra looks.
“I have worked a lot on my pre-shot routine since I got back into it. It has been great, nice to work on something so simple but which makes your practice so purposeful because you have to reset after every ball.
“I walked the High Line in Manhattan on the Tuesday and had a really good chat with Rotella for about an hour. We talked a lot about all that stuff, about routine. We talked about Pinehurst, where the positives far outweighed the negatives but the negatives were pretty big. You have to learn from it.”
The Northern Irishman runs through his close shaves in recent majors. The US Opens of 2021 and 2023. He pauses on the Open Championship in 2022, where McIlroy was reduced to tears when a healthy lead after nine holes on Sunday evaporated thanks to a rampaging Cameron Smith.
“St Andrews hurt way more than this one,” he says. “Oh my God. I didn’t cry after this.” But why? “It is St Andrews. It is the Open. A three-shot lead on 10 … it was the 150th. The crowd support I got there was unreal.”
McIlroy ain’t seen nothing yet; the scale of backing he will receive at Royal Troon from Thursday, partly because of Pinehurst, promises to be epic. What he will not do is use the US Open as psychological inspiration. “No. It’s gone. I know I am playing well. I know that with the shape my game is in, if I go and do my thing there then I’ll hopefully have an opportunity at Troon.”
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McIlroy has taken heart that he was in such a formidable US Open spot in the first place. There have been precious few of those moments post-2014 for a player of such jaw-dropping talent. “I just took the initiative,” he says. “I was less tentative and played with more freedom. I was more assertive, not as passive.
“At this point I would rather lose through trying to win it than lose it through trying not to lose. I haven’t been as assertive over the past couple of years in the biggest tournaments.”
McIlroy covers his eyes when recalling his memorable pre-tournament press conference at this Ayrshire venue eight years ago. “The Olympics …” There was a second part: McIlroy said he could take human growth hormone and go undetected, such was the lack of blood testing for banned substances in golf. “You still could,” he says. “I haven’t had a blood test in … I can’t remember when I last had one. It is expensive but … yeah.”
One of many endearing McIlroy traits is that he readily admits errors. Having castigated and skipped the Games in 2016, he loved it as a competitor for Ireland in 2021. He will don green and white again in Paris next month. The choice of representing them or Great Britain had weighed needlessly but heavily on his mind.
“I had a sense of resentment towards the Olympics because I had always tried to stay so neutral and it presented me with this option of; what are you going to do?” he says. “I had to get over that. All of my amateur career I played for Ireland. I was very proud to play for Ireland. So why would I do anything differently as a professional?
“Tokyo felt like a throwback to the amateur days. All the federations were there. Seeing people from the amateur game who I hadn’t seen for decades. I really enjoyed the experience and I’m sure Paris will be even better because I’ll get to go to some of the other events.
“It’s a bit like the Ryder Cup, I made comments before I had experienced it. I am excited to go back.”
Olympic glory is clearly incomparable to winning majors. Golf returned to the Games in 2016 after a hiatus stretching back to 1904. McIlroy is unsure what a podium place would mean for his legacy. “It would be incredibly special for me as an individual to have a gold medal,” he says. “In the wider context of how people would see me and what it would do for my legacy or career? I don’t know. I would be unbelievably proud to get any medal in Paris. A gold medal would be one of the proudest moments of my career.”
Pinehurst did trigger a mindset shift of sorts. “I did say this to my team a couple of days afterwards,” he says. “I have always said I don’t deserve anything from golf but after St Andrews, LA Country Club, Pinehurst I am finally getting to the point where I feel like I deserve something.
“That doesn’t mean to say I’ll get it. I always felt if you say you deserve something, it reeks of entitlement. Nobody is entitled to anything in this game or life in general. You have to earn everything. But I feel like I am in a great position to go and earn it.”
There would be no more popular outcome. Sporting mishap has allowed McIlroy to command even more hearts and minds.
