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Had Ryder Cup captain Pádraig Harrington been watching Robert MacIntyre’s Zoom call to the Scottish media on 22 March, there was a moment when he would have shut his notebook and given a knowing nod.
At the start of the call, MacIntyre had looked a bit down following a 36th place in the Arnold Palmer Invitational and missing the cut at the Players. “I’m not playing my best,” he said. “I’m having to fight every day.”
Then someone mentioned the upcoming WGC-Dell Technologies Match-Play.
At that, MacIntyre’s eyes lit up as the following observations tumbled from his lips. “I can’t wait. … It’s right up my alley. … I’m not going to be fussed who I play. … Anyone can beat anyone. … Wednesday will be time to fight.”
In other words, it was everything Harrington wanted to hear. There was no attempt on MacIntyre’s part to sound cool; he was being his usual refreshing self.
“I can stand with these guys. I’ve got all the shots. I’m doing all the right things.”
RObert MacIntyre
Nothing changed when he learned he had Dustin Johnson in his group and, when the day came, he was 2 up with three to play. So far so good, but at that point the world No 1 hit back with a couple of birdies and salvaged a tie.
That Johnson, as MacIntyre said, had had to throw “everything bar the kitchen sink” at him, left the Scot feeling rather less upset with the halved match than he might have been, particularly as it meant he still won the group and progressed to the Round of 16.
“What it’s confirmed is something I’ve been thinking for a bit,” said the 24-year-old, who often answers to Bob. “I can stand with these guys. I’ve got all the shots. I’m doing all the right things.”
In its own way, MacIntyre’s proximity to five-time major champion Phil Mickelson on the putting green at the Masters was similarly telling. It was at the start of the week and he was on one side of the green and Mickelson on the other, with no-one else to be seen. Since they had never met, someone asked, expectantly, if MacIntyre had gone across to introduce himself.
MacIntyre said it was not up to him, a new boy, to approach a player of such stature, even if he was a fellow left-hander. And no, Mickelson had not approached him.
MacIntyre’s brief summation of this non-happening was a matter-of-fact: “I’ve never spoken to the guy in my life. I’m there to beat him, not to meet him.”
Yet even on another Zoom call you sensed an element of surprise/disappointment on the Scot’s part. After all, Mickelson had not only been one of his childhood heroes, but the Masters is a week when many a great player will go out of his way to welcome a first-timer.
After a share of 12th place to ensure a return trip to Augusta next year, MacIntyre was playing at Hilton Head before flying back to his beloved Oban, that out-of-the-way seaside town on Scotland’s North-West coast. Fiona Scott, who covers news and sport for The Oban Times, says that once MacIntyre emerges from his quarantine period, he will do what he always does in meeting up with old friends from school and the local golf and shinty clubs. “He hangs about with his pals and he’ll sometimes give his dad (who is the head greenkeeper at Glencruitten Golf Club) a helping hand.”
Scott had an interesting aside to go with MacIntyre’s film clip of his drive up Magnolia Lane to the strains of Campbell Brown’s Gunna Sound Ceilidh Band. In no time at all, half Scotland were humming the tune, with the only person who knew nothing of the goings-on one Stuart Jackson, the composer of the song’s lyric. The first he heard of it was from a succession of phone calls which started the following day.
“Stuart doesn’t do social media,” Scott explained. “Not a lot of people in these parts bother with Facebook and Twitter.”
MacIntyre will be meeting soon with his European Tour friends at the British Masters. Victor Perez, for example, is someone he has known since Challenge Tour days, while he is close to a host of others including Lee Westwood and Tommy Fleetwood. (Not that he would go in for such name-dropping.) What is relevant here is that when MacIntyre was quizzed on whether he saw his future in the States, he said at once that he plans to do a “Tommy Tour,” i.e., to do as Fleetwood does and divide his time between the two circuits.
His American-based pals include Rory McIlroy and Patrick Reed, the latter of whom he first met when Reed played in a European Tour event. Going on from there, he has the beginnings of an unlikely bond with Kyle Stanley, the player with whom he had words after the American refused to yell “Fore” during the 2019 Open. (On the second time it happened, his ball had hit the mother of MacIntyre’s caddie.)
Stanley, who was mighty peeved at getting a telling off from someone so young, would later show his respect for the player by sending him a congratulatory text when he won European Rookie of the Year honours. Maybe MacIntyre should keep an eye open for a message from Mickelson at some point.
That MacIntyre’s friendships tend to gather in strength through the years is much the same as is happening with his golf. He does not begin to think of himself as a certainty for Harrington’s Ryder Cup side, saying he would need to be among the automatic qualifiers before he began to believe. (Currently he is 10th on the list where only the top nine are automatic.) Yet even if he is to miss out, it will not be the end of his golfing world.
“It’s all about moving up gradually,” MacIntyre said. “It doesn’t need to be done tomorrow because this is something I want to be doing for a lot of years.
“Whatever happens, my performance at Augusta has allowed me to add a tick to my check-list. I’m moving at the right pace.”
Top: Robert MacIntyre during the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play
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