Skratch Tiger Wood Will Never Be Champion Again

Rory McIlroy wasn't happy. He was 17. He'd simply won the Mullingar Scratch Cup, making him mayhap the best amateur golfer in the world. And and so on the bulldoze home he broke into tears. These weren't tears of joy; he wasn't worried about future pressure level. He cried because he felt empty inside. He thought he'd find some kind of enlightenment with that large trophy; instead, he merely found more space within his own head. He'd grown tired and frustrated with the game. He told his parents he wanted to quit.

He didn't experience the manner he thought he would feel. He wondered whether maybe he should be meeting girls, hanging out with friends, getting drunkard. Teen stuff.

And Rory's parents weren't determined to alter his mind, even later on all the sacrifices they had made to go him in that location. (Rory'southward father, Gerry, tended bar at the local golf club and held a 2nd chore as a cleaner; his mother, Rosie, worked the dark shift at a 3M plant outside Belfast.) They just wanted their son to be happy. If he wanted to quit, that was fine. He had been a child prodigy, swinging a golf club on goggle box for an adoring and hopeful oversupply, non because he was raised to be a killer, but because he just liked chipping golf balls into the family washing machine.

Donald Miralle/Sports Illustrated

Later on iv days, though, teenage Rory McIlroy got bored and picked his clubs back up. He loved golf again, whatever that meant. He won the European Amateur Championship three weeks later. A year after that he turned pro, and two more years after that he was threatening at majors, finishing third at the 2009 and '10 PGA Championships, and at the '10 Open.

At the Masters the next year, McIlroy shot a blazing 65 in the first round, and entering that Lord's day he was four shots clear of the field. Information technology was the largest margin held by a leader heading into the terminal round in over a decade. Drool practically dripped from the television set screen as the CBS broadcast teed upwardly the conclusion. The camera lingered lustily over Rory on the practise putting green while a graphic pointed out the obvious:

Only 21-year-old to win the Masters: Tiger Wood—1997.
Rory McIlroy currently 21 years former.

Y'all don't say.

Information technology volition be decades before anything promising in the golf game world is not refracted through the prism of Tiger Woods. Since 2009 or and so, no new face has been able to make a mark on the game without condign a candidate for successor. Collin Morikawa is The Adjacent Tiger. Earlier that, Jordan Speith was The Adjacent Tiger. The showtime Next Tiger, though—or the commencement serious one, at to the lowest degree—was McIlroy. It was a story too tempting, too lucrative, too warm and fuzzy not to tell.

Rory is not a big human; he's listed at 5'nine". But when he has the big stick in his hands in that location is a whiff of the supernatural in the air. The great inverted catapult has fabricated him one of the longest players on tour for the entirety of his career. That calendar week more than a decade ago at Augusta, he led the field in driving distance heading into Sunday, just as Tiger did when he was young and fearless. Inquire most thirty-something tour pros whose swing they virtually wish they could have, and they'll tell you lot: Tiger circa 2000. For a younger generation, the answer is often: Rory.

McIlroy has never actually been an electric doodle similar Wood, but there is a poetry to his game—something that, when he has been on, makes you lot believe that he could go out of whatsoever jam. Speith and Phil Mickelson make the game look hard 99% of the fourth dimension. Rory and Tiger, at their best, made it expect similar the idea of something going wrong hadn't even occurred to them.

In 2011, when Rory won the U.S. Open up, information technology wasn't past 15 shots—as Tiger had, stunningly, 11 years earlier—but he did leave the field to spin out in his jet wash, eight strokes back. That week at Congressional Country Club, Padraig Harrington pointed to the 22-year-old and said to Sports Illustrated: "If you are going to talk virtually someone challenging Jack'southward record [of xviii major championships], there'southward your homo." 1 twelvemonth afterwards, McIlroy repeated the feat, finishing the PGA Championship at Kiawah eight strokes articulate of the field. In 'xiv he won the Open Championship at Hoylake (the previous winner there? Tiger, '06) and the PGA Championship at Valhalla (Tiger, '00, obviously).

Every bit McIlroy strode upwardly the fairway in Louisville that twelvemonth, playing into Mickelson and Rickie Fowler, eyes ablaze, shining in the literal dark and stormy night, it all seemed and then obvious. In Shane Ryan's wonderful account of the 2014 season on tour, Slaying the Tiger, he wrote of Rory: "We knew the truth once again—this virtuosity comes in one case in a generation, at best, and though nosotros forcefulness the empty comparing on each new prodigy, you cannot fake the flush of recognition … that brings the proper noun 'Tiger' to the tip of every tongue."

But deep downwards, we knew then—and certainly we know now—that Rory McIlroy was no Tiger Forest. Ultimately, at that Masters in 2011, he did not do the chyron writer any favors, and he certainly didn't stride on the throats of his competitors. He looked like a child who wanted it too desperately. Overwhelmed past the moment, he shot an eighty, finishing tied for 15th.

Information technology has been eight years since McIlroy last won a major. Eleven years afterwards his collapse, he still has not won the Masters, where on Th he shot a middling 73, making some long putts and shoving some short ones, finishing half dozen strokes back of the leader, Sungjae Im. It tin can often feel equally if the golf media pays him likewise much attention, pretending that the Rory we meet today is the Rory of 2014. And, in a way, that's understandable. At 32, he'due south in his golfing prime; he'southward never had whatever meaning injury problems; and he'south ranked No. 9 in the world. He hasn't gone through whatever meaningful slumps, similar the one that saw Speith plummet to No. 92 or the 1 that dropped Fowler out of the top 100 and may continue him at that place the balance of his life. When an athlete at such an early age bares his teeth and makes his opponents bleed, and then zip dramatically changes his story, it'southward hard to ever once again think of him as anything but a contender. And notwithstanding, for all the contending, Rory has whiffed at 26 majors in a row.

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I've been thinking about Rory a lot lately. About his place within an old and strange and rigid game amid a rather volatile time in its history. Nigh our attempts to accept the Jordanesque model that Tiger refined and square it with the trajectory of The Next Tiger's real-life career. And nigh McIlroy's attempts to square that story with the realities of his own career. The golf world talks nearly Rory as a contender too much. But maybe he's more interesting in this post-alpha-dog stage of his career than he ever was while winning majors.

McIlroy has defied most of the like shooting fish in a barrel explanations that our best athletes face when they struggle. Is he too old at present? No. Is he merely incapable of winning the big i? No. Has an injury robbed him of something? No. Does he just stink? No. On paper, he should fence at every tournament he plays in—but then you watch him wing greens with a wedge and miss the cut at the damn Texas Open, and you lot wonder how he's even managed to hold onto that pinnacle-10 ranking. Something, obviously, is missing.

That cannibal menstruation state is gone. At the U.S. Open up concluding yr, McIlroy approached Torrey Pines' dorsum 9 in a iv-style necktie for the lead. He scrambled at the 10th to make a par salve. Over the next ii holes he'd find himself in all the wrong places and drop iii shots, effectively ending his tournament. At the Masters, he was about recently in serious contention in 2018, when he was in the final grouping on Dominicus, three strokes behind Patrick Reed. But he never actually made a run, wilting to fifth with a 74.

Even at smaller events, in pole position late on Sundays, he has imploded. Leading with five holes to go at the European Tour's year-end event in December, he dropped iii shots, letting five golfers naught by, including the winner, Morikawa. After the tournament, in a much-memed moment, he was photographed back at the clubhouse, having ripped his shirt in rage. In January, at a European Tour outcome in Dubai, he led again, this time with three holes to play. His commuter started spraying, he establish himself in the desert, in the bushes, in the water. He would drib to tertiary as another young gun, Viktor Hovland, grabbed the trophy. Frankly, it's all been hard to watch.

In 2011, McIlroy entered Dominicus at Augusta four shots clear of the field. Then things turned.

Robert Brook/Sports Illustrated

"When I endeavor to soften the accident of not playing my best golf or not getting a win, it'south like: I'm already winning. I've got this dandy life, and I've got this wonderful family, and I've made all this money," McIlroy said in December on the No Laying Up podcast. "I started to use all that equally a crutch, and I had to realize that that'southward my life and that's wonderful, but you tin't separate these 2 things."

That interview was littered with longings and hopes. Like: "It's easier to get to the destination than information technology is to stay in that location." And: "People don't remember good finishes." And: "I've had chances, I just haven't capitalized on them." And: "I yet feel like I accept a long runway ahead of me."

To Rory'southward credit, he'south never backed away from hard questions nearly, well, anything, really. He's known to be generous with his fourth dimension, openly confronting everything from geopolitics to the ins and outs of his game. But how many answers does he accept about himself?

"The thing that I would dearest to know about Rory McIlroy," ESPN writer Wright Thompson wondered aloud recently on The Golfer'southward Periodical Podcast, is "I'k curious [if] what he saw happen to his friend Tiger Wood"—meaning Tiger'southward mail-sex activity-scandal downfall and his subsequent struggles with injuries and substances—"how did that scare [Rory]? I think he knows something about living in public that very few people know."

The most interesting affair about McIlroy right at present is the extent to which he isn't Tiger. Despite all the similarities—the big drives and the early on successes and the working-class babyhood—he's concluded up in the one place Tiger never was: competitive purgatory. Rory can feel similar a bit of an afterthought these days, no thing how much any broadcaster might try to sell him to us. Even if he'southward rising up the leaderboard, nobody is quaking anymore. But Tiger—post-scandal, with a bad dorsum, with a bad leg, later on a layoff, any—has rarely just felt like some random member of the field. He'southward never missed a cut at Augusta as a pro. Rory missed it concluding year.

And for all of the iciness Tiger has always shown the media, he was never coy nearly his need to win that 19th major. Fifty-fifty through his scandals and his early on injury issues, Woods insisted that he wouldn't testify upwardly if he didn't think he could win. It wasn't until 2017 that he e'er admitted to doubting himself. Of course, whatever dubiety he did have, understandably, after all the back and knee surgeries, was conspicuously put bated chop-chop. In two years he went from wondering whether he would ever tee information technology upwardly again to winning the Masters. About a year ago he was asking doctors whether his leg might need to be amputated. Now, he believes he tin win this weekend.

Meanwhile, McIlroy's absolute un-Tiger-ness—his comfort in openly questioning himself; his willingness to discuss things off the course—is what makes him interesting. He will talk about nearly anything. He has openly reprimanded everybody from Phil Mickelson (for his working with the investment arm of the Saudi Arabian authorities to squash the PGA Tour) to Donald Trump (for his handling of the pandemic). Thompson, on that podcast, posited that such honesty might be a manner for McIlroy to avoid the depths to which ane can fall when sports are everything and and then the lesser falls out. But peradventure such willingness to zoom out and talk nearly how golf game just isn't that important has cost him something competitively, as well.

McIlroy started the first round with a 69 in 2018, tied for quaternary. Since then it's been a deadening slide further back.

Robert Beck/Sports Illustrated

In recent years we have learned the difficult way to be conscientious when describing public figures as thoughtful or cerebral. But McIlroy does offer something refreshing: earnestness. He doesn't have all the answers, but he does seem dedicated to turning the questions over while we watch him. Among con men and walking dial tones, he seems like a person trying to figure things out. Most of the golfers who motion the needle these days are heels, or at least antiheroes. McIlroy is a face.

But no matter how much he talks openly about his life off the turf, or about his attempts to find something extra on the course, it seems clear that he has non yet institute peace. He is defenseless between the comforts of his stardom and the unease that comes with knowing he is underachieving. He has tried to convince himself, and usa, that he is O.One thousand. with his golf life, and it clearly hasn't worked for either party. Hence, the shirt ripping. How much does McIlroy's willingness to engage with the complexities of the world—to divert his gaze from the tunnel of competition—cost him the accented, delusional confidence that an athlete needs to succeed on a generational level?

In his 1992 review of Tracy Austin's memoir, Beyond Center Court, (forgive me) David Foster Wallace, underwhelmed by the banal book, offered a theory about blue-chip athletes and the overused sayings they spout: "How, at the critical moment, tin they invoke for themselves a cliché as trite as 'One brawl at a fourth dimension' or 'Gotta concentrate here,' and mean it, and and then do it? Perhaps it's considering, for pinnacle athletes, clichés present themselves not as trite but simply as true, or perhaps not fifty-fifty as declarative expressions with qualities like depth or triteness or falsehood or truth but as unproblematic imperatives that are either useful or not and, if useful, to exist invoked and obeyed and that's all there is to it."

Information technology'southward virtually impossible to believe that McIlroy has reduced the stimuli at Augusta to such a useful binary. Nearly every year at the Masters he starts slowly. He's shot in the 60s on a Thursday just twice. Coming into this tournament, he'd been trending in the wrong management, opening with a 73 in 2019, a 75 in '20, and a dreadful 76 last year. After that last one, he said: "I'one thousand just at the offset of a journeying hither that I know volition become me back to where I want to be."

Sure.

Those aren't the scores of somebody who knows he's on the correct path. Those scores are demons.

I find it admirable when professional athletes admit they care well-nigh more than winning. Last year, Kevin Kisner, one of the tour'south shorter hitters, said that he didn't believe he could win a tournament at a grade like Torrey Pines or Bethpage Black, major venues defined by their length and narrow fairways. An interviewer asked him why, so, he bothered showing upwardly. "Because they give abroad a lot of money for 20th," he said.

But the calculus for someone like Kisner, a very good histrion, is not the same as it is for a generational prodigy. I want to believe Rory, that golf just isn't that important to him. How admirable and aspirational it is to see, say, Ash Barty conquer the lawn tennis world, and so go home forever to relax? How freeing might information technology exist for all of u.s. to meet somebody let go of their ain story, comfortable knowing that they need to answer to only themselves and their loved ones?

I wish I could believe this is what Rory is doing now. But fifty-fifty watching him requite those measured, honest responses in that wonderful lilt of his feels like seeing him squirm.

At this signal, the story of Rory McIlroy'south career is the story of him telling himself stories.

Recently, some of these stories take been technical. He went through a slump in parts of 2020 and '21 afterward telling himself that he needed to chase Bryson DeChambeau's altitude off the tee. The speed grooming threw his tempo out of whack. Now he's taking the opposite tack: He says he has committed to hitting more irons and fairway woods off the tee, throttling back to prioritize accurateness, like Tiger did at Hoylake in '06.

Some of these stories are emotional. I have a family that I intendance virtually more than I could ever intendance about golf. … I'k an investor now. … I'k wearing many hats within the game. Some of them are speculative, logistical. I'm not thinking most golf, I'm just learning to juggle. … I'thou going to skip the WGC Match Play so information technology doesn't mess with my stroke-play game.

McIlroy offers something refreshing: earnestness. He seems defended to turning the questions over while we watch him.

Kohjiro Kinno/Sports Illustrated

D.J. Piehowski put it this mode on a recent episode of No Laying Up: "He seems similar he'south feeling a lot of things out at that place." And feelings probably aren't the all-time things to be fighting with in high-force per unit area situations.

What does he actually want to know? What is he trying to talk himself into? Is the story of Rory McIlroy that information technology's O.One thousand. non to win at all costs, that losing is freedom? Or that one time yous've lost your edge, y'all can never go information technology back?

ESPN writer Kevin Van Valkenburg, on The Shotgun Starting time podcast, reflected on a foreign stretch in 2003 when Mickelson seemed determined to pitch in a professional person baseball game. Mickelson had insisted, against all logic, that throwing a baseball was constructive cross-preparation for golf, and he believed that if he could increase his velocity just a footling bit that he could at least pitch an inning in the minors. The Toledo Mud Hens, a Triple A team looking for some skilful publicity, were fine giving him a take a chance.

In truth, Mickelson's fastball failed to touch 70 mph, and Mud Hens coaches, surely fearing that they might crusade the decease of the globe's second-most-famous golfer, barely even let position players have cuts off of him at practice. They, obviously, could not in good conscience permit him anywhere about actual contest. This was the weirdest—but certainly not the only—strange stunt that Mickelson has pulled during the course of his career. And so, why'd he do it?

"Phil did this for a long time because he needed to tell himself a story that immune him to not be a failure for never having won a major," Van Valkenburg said. "Similarly, Rory is [proverb to himself]: The reason I haven't won the Masters is because I merely haven't told myself the right story."

Rory McIlroy isn't the well-nigh focused storyteller in sports. He says too much virtually too many things. And maybe that ways he thinks about his struggles as well much to put them behind him. Or mayhap the weight is ready to be lifted from his shoulders, if the right narrative could just set his head straight.

Tin Rory win the Masters this year? Perhaps that'south the incorrect question. Instead, possibly we should ask: What story is he telling himself?

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Source: https://www.si.com/golf-archives/2022/04/08/rory-mcilroy-tiger-woods-daily-cover

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