“Bob’s just Bob,” said Charles Spreadbury, the captain at Glencruitten Golf Club in Oban, Scotland, when I asked him about Bob MacIntyre, the winner of the recent DS Automobiles Italian Open at Marco Simone. “He’s as down-to-earth as they come, a credit to his mum and dad.” (Spreadbury has known MacIntyre’s father, Dougie, the head greenkeeper at Glencruitten, all his days.)
You knew that nothing would have changed after MacIntyre defeated Matt Fitzpatrick at the first extra hole in Italy and, sure enough, he was his usual refreshing self. There was no attempt to sound cool, just the truth and the whole truth about how much the win had meant.
“It was absolutely massive, the biggest of my life,” said the Scot, whose only other main tour triumph was in the 2020 Cyprus Showdown. “The way I did it may not have been pretty at times, but it was dogged.”
At the start of the week, MacIntyre had not been at all sure that Marco Simone, home of next year’s Ryder Cup, was going to suit him. But come Sunday, when he sped to the turn in 29 on his way to a 64, he was liking it more by the minute. His knees may have been rattling when he had to hole a 3-footer for his winning birdie, but, as he said himself, “I got the job done.”
Luke Donald, the ’23 Ryder Cup captain who is every bit as gentlemanly a character as MacIntyre is himself, wasted no time in getting in touch.
For the record, MacIntyre moved from 110th to 68th in the Official World Golf Ranking and, at the same time, slipped into position behind Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy in the Ryder Cup points process.
It goes without saying that people have been reminding him that he got off to the best of starts in the scramble for points for Pádraig Harrington’s team last year, only to miss out by the proverbial whisker.
“When I’m in Oban, I’m treated the same as I’ve always been treated. Out on tour, people can look at you a little differently.”
Bob MacIntyre
Yet it was maybe no bad thing that he missed out on a week in which the Europeans were trounced to the tune of 19-9 at Whistling Straits. On the Saturday of that Ryder Cup weekend – it was precisely a year ago – he had featured on the winning Oban shinty team in a league match against Aberdour. Not only that, but he contributed a goal to his side’s 8-0 victory.
MacIntyre is always learning from the way the top golfers play and from how they live their lives, and he now knows exactly what works for him.
It was a couple of years ago that he told Global Golf Post, “I see some of the stars being pestered for autographs and part of me thinks I’d love to be like them. Deep down, though, I know how important it is to be able to get away from it all. You have to be able to separate what you do from who you are.”
The separation process, for him, involves a 2½-hour drive from Glasgow to Oban every time he returns from an overseas event. “When I’m in Oban, I’m treated the same as I’ve always been treated,” he said. “Out on tour, people can look at you a little differently.”
To no small extent, home life goes with him on most of his U.S. tournament forays. For example, his mother, Carol, often will be a part of his team – she is the head cook – when he rents a home for a run of events in the States.
The other members of the party will be Simon Shanks, his coach, Stuart Morgan, his performance coach, and Iain Stoddart, the owner of Bounce Sport Management. Stoddart, incidentally, has always been no less concerned with arranging the big money deals for MacIntryre than doing what he thinks is absolutely right for a Highlander who is the reverse of a city slicker.
On the DP World Tour, the arrangements are all very different as players stay in the same hotels and travel to their various venues in the same bus. Mind you, Steve Stricker, Harrington’s opposite number, was lucky enough to field a Ryder Cup team for Whistling Straits who enjoyed much the same degree of camaraderie as the Europeans, besides being the better players of the moment.
Derek Ritchie, Stoddart’s assistant, senses that the Scottish golfers of the moment are riding the same wave, at their own level, as did Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth and the other members of Stricker’s side: “The Scots are all good friends, and they’re all rooting for one another. One gets a win, and the others feed off it. Ewen Ferguson, for instance, has won twice in his rookie season on DP World Tour, with Richie Ramsay and MacIntyre having one apiece.”
MacIntyre puts it this way: “When guys are winning, a bit of jealousy kicks in and it pushes you on for more.”
Not for the first time, journalists seized this latest opportunity to ask for his current opinion on LIV Golf, and whether he thought LIV players – banned by the PGA Tour but permitted by court injunction to play on the DP World Tour – should be allowed to be a part of the ’23 Ryder Cup.
The first time he was asked about LIV, MacIntyre had described the money as “obscene.” Two weeks ago in Italy, he was less forthcoming, explaining that he is busy concentrating on making the team, and whatever the decision made by the hierarchy about the LIV players will be fine by him.
“I have an ear open for what’s going on, but I wouldn’t want to get as involved as, say, Rory does,” MacIntyre said. As to whether his friendship with Austrian Bernd Wiesberger, a LIV man, is still intact, he said that nothing had changed. “My job is my business; his job is his business.”
MacIntyre might be no different from McIlroy in being one of the game’s great diplomats in years to come, but at this stage in his golfing life, he has neither the will nor the time to get embroiled in arguments.
Top: Bob MacIntyre calls Italian Open victory on 2023 Ryder Cup course "the biggest of my life."
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