TORONTO | During a week when external events threatened to overshadow what was going at the RBC Canadian Open, Rory McIlroy demonstrated what’s most compelling about professional golf is never going to be politics, bureaucracy, or investment funds. What makes golf fascinating is when the best in the game square off on a world-class golf course and simply match one another shot for shot as thousands urge them on.
That’s exactly what happened during the fourth round at St. George’s Golf and Country Club, as McIlroy successfully defended the title that he won in 2019. After two cancellations because of the pandemic, he returned to Canada and picked up where he left off, shooting a final-round 62, one shot behind his closing score at the 2019 RBC Canadian Open.
In many ways, he was the ideal winner on a great day for him, the PGA Tour and RBC, the sponsor that saw two of its affiliated players jump to the new LIV Golf series in the days ahead of the tournament. With worries about weather potentially disrupting the final day, groups went out in threesomes, meaning McIlroy was paired with Tony Finau and Justin Thomas. The three would jockey for the lead all day, with thousands of fans following them around the hills and valleys of St. George’s. When McIlroy’s 4-foot birdie dropped on 18 to better Finau by two and Thomas by four, he demonstrated, once again, that he’s one of the few players on the PGA Tour who transcend golf.
Beyond the fairways, he also has become one of the most compelling and observant commentators on the state of the game. One of the most outspoken opponents of the Saudi-funded LIV tour, McIlroy is comfortable using his stature to state his position on golf’s breakaway league clearly and unequivocally. He’s not afraid to have an opinion, a perspective based on his success on the course, and self-confidence away from it. At 33, he’s likely too young to be considered one of the game’s elder statesmen, but considering that he turned pro 15 years ago, it isn’t out of the question.
So it isn’t all that surprising that McIlroy used an early question in his post-round press conference to take a calculated swing at LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman. It turns out that Norman and McIlroy were tied with 20 wins on the PGA Tour – but they aren’t tied any more.
“The guy who is spearheading that has 20 wins, and I wanted to get ahead of him,” McIlroy said in a jab at Norman. Cheeky, without question, but also likely very honest.
Earlier in the week, McIlroy made an impassioned defence of the PGA Tour, highlighting a pervasive greed that he thought was leading some to jump to a tour financed by the Saudis’ Public Investment Fund. Players can make decisions based on their self-interest, he said, but decisions based purely on money don’t resonate with him.“Obviously money is a deciding factor in a lot of things in this world, but if it's purely for money … it never seems to go the way you want it to,” he said as the news broke earlier in the week that Bryson DeChambeau was the latest player to make the move to LIV. “Any decision that you make in your life that's purely for money usually doesn't end up going the right way.”
That wasn’t the only one of his remarks that offered his perspective on the final round of the RBC Canadian Open, but also a shot at LIV.
Where does the win fit in with the others in his career? Maybe it is too early to start talking about a legacy in the game, but McIlroy wasn’t afraid to try to put it in perspective.
“I guess time will tell,” he said. “It feels really good with other things that were going on in the world of golf. For the Canadian Open to have three of the best players in the world going at it down the stretch … that’s as top-notch as you’re going to get. I’ll look back on this week, and especially today, with very fond memories.”
Is this the end of the PGA Tour as we know it, or the start of something new? McIlroy’s perspective is clear: the RBC Canadian Open showed how people react when the best in the world battle it out in front of thousands of fans. When you strip away the rhetoric of the week, that’s really what it comes down to, and what McIlroy demonstrated on an overcast Sunday in Toronto.
Robert Thompson