Suppose Rory McIlroy never wins another major championship.
Would he be considered an underachiever?
Someone asked that question recently, and as thought-provoking as it is, it’s unfair to McIlroy.
He has won 23 PGA Tour events including four major championships, World Golf Hall of Fame credentials of the highest order, but somehow there’s a sense he should have done more.
It seems a little harsh to me.
Compare McIlroy with Brooks Koepka, and who has had the better career?
Koepka has won one more major, but he has won only nine PGA Tour events. Koepka’s 18 worldwide victories are exactly half as many as McIlroy has, but he’s seen through a different prism.
It’s McIlroy who carries the weight of expectations with him like no one else currently in the game. It feels as if every tournament is a referendum on him, and every major championship is a moment to prove something he actually proved nearly a decade ago.
McIlroy doesn’t need to win another major championship to define his career. If McIlroy never wins another golf tournament, he has defined his generation.
Maybe it’s because McIlroy made winning majors look easy for a time. He won the Open Championship and the PGA Championship in 2014 before the victory spigot turned off.
When Jordan Spieth shows up at Hoylake next month for the Open Championship, it will be six years since he won the last of his three majors, but he doesn’t play under the same expectations as McIlroy.
It happens.
Who thought that when Arnold Palmer won the 1964 Masters, it would be his final major title?
Since the 2014 PGA Championship, all McIlroy has done is collect 19 top-10s in majors including three runner-up finishes, most recently at the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club, where he did almost everything right except leave with the trophy won by Wyndham Clark.
That’s part of why McIlroy’s major championships have such an emotional tug. Clark, who has become an exceptional player, got it done, but McIlroy couldn’t. They shot the same score on Sunday.
One stroke felt like one million.
In the requiem of this U.S. Open, it’s easy to point to the few mistakes McIlroy made – three-putting for par from just off the green at the par-5 eighth hole and dumping a wedge shot short of the 14th green leading to a crushing bogey on a par-5 – as evidence of what’s missing but, as sports psychologist Bob Rotella preaches, golf is not a game of perfect.
Seeing McIlroy make a hole-in-one Thursday in the Travelers Championship sparked the thought of, If only …
“When you're in contention going into the final round of a U.S. Open, I played the way I wanted to play. There was just a couple of shots, two or three shots over the course of the round that I’d like to have back,” McIlroy said at LACC while Clark was receiving the U.S. Open trophy.
Clark wasn’t perfect. He had to take a penalty stroke on the 17th hole on Saturday and looked ready to chop the tournament away when he decided to play from the barranca brush left of the eighth green on Sunday. Mistakes are arguably the biggest part of the game, particularly in major championships, and every player makes them. Minimizing them is essential.
Recently, former Ryder Cup captain Tony Jacklin, a two-time major champion, told the Sporting Post, “I consider (McIlroy) a friend, but he is also a pain in the arse when he doesn’t fulfill his potential. He just makes it look so easy, that’s the thing – fans like me lose the reality of how difficult it is.”
The mistakes seem more pronounced because of the scrutiny on McIlroy, and he seems to make more of them with his wedges. Also, in the final round of the Open Championship and the U.S. Open, McIlroy had 36 and 34 putts, respectively. It’s not so much that he’s missing putts as he’s not giving himself enough great chances. Putting for birdies from 30 feet doesn’t promise many birdies.
And, sometimes the other player is just a little better on a given week.
At age 34, McIlroy is close to the same age as Phil Mickelson was when, at 33 and 10 months, he won the first of his six majors. McIlroy is in his prime, and he plays with more baggage than before. He’s not the fresh-faced wonder kid any more. He’s old enough to know how hard it is to win majors, and that doesn’t make them any easier to win.
McIlroy has done it while being the PGA Tour’s out-front man in the ongoing battle with LIV Golf. He finally and wisely decided to step back from that role to focus on his golf, himself and his family.
It’s a compliment, really, that so many observers care so much about McIlroy winning another major. There is a collective emotional investment in him that may exceed all other players combined.
In his past seven major championship starts, McIlroy has finished 2, 8, T5, 3, MC (at the Masters this year), T7, 2. He keeps putting himself in contention, something only Scottie Scheffler has done as consistently in the past two years.
And, by the way, he’s the only player to have won the FedEx Cup three times.
When McIlroy walked away from St. Andrews last year and again at LACC after the U.S. Open, the disappointment was painted on his face and in his body language. It was in the Los Angeles air that Sunday evening. That takes nothing away from Clark’s career-changing victory, but it reinforced the feeling McIlroy inspires.
For him, the challenge is bigger than competing against everyone else. McIlroy is also competing against what he’s already done.
“No one wants me to win another major more than I do,” McIlroy said before the U.S. Open. “The desire is there.”
Underachiever?
No way.
More like a helluva ride that's far from over.
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