Rory McIlroy tapped at his last putt in an early morning pro-am at TPC Potomac on Wednesday, and the serenade followed. “Happy Birthday, dear Rory,” sang the fans along the ropes and the players in his group.
On Father’s Day 11 years ago, at the course across the street from here - venerable Congressional Country Club - he won his first major, the US Open, as a strutting, preening 22-year-old bachelor. As of Wednesday, he is 33, a husband and a father himself. He is not just the most significant star in a relatively weak field at this week’s Wells Fargo Championship. He is nothing short of the conscience of his sport.
He can address questions about the direction of the game. He can address questions, as he did on Wednesday, about how the Tour should re-imagine the fall segment of its schedule. He will be thoughtful and reasoned and honest about them all.
“Like, if I had been asked that question 10 years ago, I would have been like, ‘What are you talking about?’” he said Wednesday. “I just want to go play golf and make birdies.”
So easy as a kid in your early 20s. Much harder as a man moving toward your mid-30s.
There is a full-circle nature to McIlroy’s appearance here that is obvious, because his accomplishment at Congressional seemed transcendent: a dominant, wire-to-wire victory in which he shot four rounds in the 60s all, posted the lowest total and lowest score in relation to par in US Open history, and officially put behind a calamitous collapse at the Masters just two months earlier. It presented as a preview of what would surely be a run of majors thereafter.
“I still to this day think it’s the best week of golf I’ve ever played in my life,” McIlroy said. “The ball was on a string that week, and you wish you could bottle that every single week that you play. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, but I think that’s still the benchmark of how I can play.”
Even all these years on, McIlroy re-watches the broadcasts from that week. If an eight-shot victory in which he was never even remotely in danger of not losing the tournament can have a signature moment, it came Sunday at Congressional’s par-3 10th. Y.E. Yang, McIlroy’s partner in the final group, struck his tee shot to maybe six feet. Rory’s response: Throw it behind the flag, have it trickle back past Yang’s ball, and nearly hole it. Ballgame.
But in those reviews of that week, there’s not a single swing or hole on which McIlroy puts his focus.
“Just sort of how free-flowing it was, and how at ease I looked,” he said. “Just sort of how comfortable I was with everything.”
As he has evolved and matured - a natural process for anyone between 22 and 33, be they golfer or greenskeeper - there’s a pursuit to rediscover what made him who he was that week at Congressional. Wednesday afternoon, he was headed back over to see the Blue Course, because the club gave him an honorary membership and he wanted to get his eyes on the renovations.
“As a member, I think it’s only right I go over and at least show my face,” he joked.
Maybe just being on the grounds would rekindle something within. McIlroy spoke before the Masters of going through a stretch where he was “playing golf swing rather than playing golf.” Watch those old swings from Congressional, and there was nothing even remotely technical or mechanical about them. The best version of Rory McIlroy is fluid and flowing, instinctual and creative.
So he is straddling two worlds, trying to find the best golf of his youth while being one of the game’s statesmen, even if he’s not yet elder. He has scolded the sport’s governing bodies - the US Golf Association and the R&A - for wastefully and narrow-mindedly investigating how to control how far the golf ball flies, a report that pertains to “0.1 percent of the golfing community.”
He played his pro-am Wednesday with four Black golfers who came up through the grass roots First Tee program and played at historically Black colleges and universities, and understood the significance in a mostly White sport. His word carries weight, no matter the subject.
“He’s proven himself on the golf course,” said Webb Simpson, a former US Open champion who serves with McIlroy on the Tour’s player advisory committee. “I think he’s proven himself off the golf course. He’s a leader, I think, for us in a lot of ways. Very articulate, and he’s been a global player for a long time now, so I think his opinions matter. . . .
“He’s certainly a guy who I think has been fun to listen to because he’s not just going to give you the right answers. He’s going to give you what he thinks.”
What he thinks, as he turns 33, is far different than what he thought at 22.
“It is something I’ve had to learn,” McIlroy said. “It’s not something I’ve always been interested in, but I think it’s something that is pretty important - especially where the game is right now, making sure it’s headed in the right direction.”
- Washington Post
