International praise for Rory McIlroy and Ireland is a balm after two years of critiques of our economic buffoonery. Our sporting victories matter now more than ever
As economists try to identify a meaningful legacy of the Celtic Tiger, the more significant and substantial Irish sporting achievements seem
THE CHORUS WAS low and defiant. In the rarefied world of Wimbledon, land of strawberries and dusty summers, a song broke out. This was not Cliff Richard singing to keep the crowd occupied on another rain-strewn day in the London suburb. This was different. From court 17 came the keening lament that has become the unofficial Irish sporting anthem: The Fields of Athenry. It happened around teatime on Tuesday.
For most of the afternoon Ireland’s Conor Niland had been involved in one of those gripping off-Broadway classics at the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet club, taking Adrian Mannarino to a fifth set in front of a small but increasingly jubilant band of Irish fans. Although Niland was the outsider, ranked 181 in the world to the Frenchman’s 55, he rushed into a 4-1 lead in the final set and was just two games from a Wimbledon appointment with perhaps the most sublime grass-court player in the history of the game, Roger Federer.
In Irish sport Niland’s name is well known, but in terms of profile tennis remains a fringe activity. You might hear of the Limerick man’s fortunes at the tail end of sports bulletins, but unless you were actively following his career you would know only that he was out there somewhere, grafting away in the relative obscurity of smaller tour events. Few of us have a clue about how difficult it is to rank as one of the top 200 tennis players in the world, and never before this week had Niland a chance to play in a major event before a national audience.
Over the afternoon, news of his progress travelled much as word of the Ireland cricket team’s stunning World Cup performance against England had done in March: what sounded at first like a far-fetched rumour turned out to be true. Niland was the first Irishman to earn a place at Wimbledon since Sean Sorenson did so back in 1977 and 1980, and here he was, poised to claim a place for an afternoon alongside Federer, whom he had beaten in their schoolboy days but who had since become a sporting deity.
In any year it would have been one of those unexpectedly brilliant Irish sports stories. But coming in the afterglow of Rory McIlroy’s achievement in the US Open in Washington, where the young man from Co Down had applied a blast of much-needed prestige to the battered national spirit, it somehow seemed natural. Of course an Irishman would play Roger Federer! Why not?
Niland was at a tennis tournament in Athens on the April weekend that McIlroy was playing the US Masters golf tournament in Augusta. Like the golfer, Niland is an avid user of Twitter. Their followers are a good indicator of their public profiles: McIlroy has 400,000 followers reading his every pronouncement; Niland has fewer than 4,000.
But the tennis player has a wickedly funny take on things. Among his messages in Athens was a comment on his visits to Starbucks and Wagamama: “Really soaking up the Greek culture.” Another tweet concerned his grievance that he was unable to find a television station showing the Masters. Like everyone else, he wanted to see how McIlroy fared. (One of the incidental revelations of Twitter is that sports stars are also sports fans. Just hours before his ill-fated final round at the Masters, McIlroy sent commiserations to the Ulster rugby team after its European Cup loss.) As it turned out, Niland was spared having to watch one of the most punishing lessons in big-time sport, a potentially scarring collapse that McIlroy bore with as much grace under pressure as anyone could hope to muster.
Last weekend McIlroy completed his imperious return to Washington and, as is the breathless way of non-stop media, found himself instantly proclaimed a billionaire in waiting and the latest man most likely to emulate Jack Nicklaus’s glittering feat of 18 major titles. It was a wonderful reprieve from all the gloomy news.
In the days before the US Open began, the New York Timescarried an report examining why such a disproportionate number of excellent golfers come from Northern Ireland. Among those lobbied for his thoughts was David Feherty, the former player from Bangor who has since made his name as a terrific analyst specialising in waspish one-liners.
"I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s during the Troubles," Feherty told the New York Times. "It was an urban-warfare environment. You had to have a keen sense of the absurd to make it. I think that arms you for some of the things you face playing golf, because it's a totally absurd sport."
Feherty’s observation proved prophetic in the light of what happened at the US Open. Nothing demonstrates the capriciousness of golf better than McIlroy’s fortunes: buckled to the point of humiliation on the last day of the Masters, he was then utterly transcendent within three months.
There was something wonderfully absurd about that turnaround. And there was something poignant about the fact that McIlroy should return to his beloved Belfast this week even as parts of the city were illuminated by the kind of petrol-bomb incidents and night violence not seen in a decade.
McIlroy is 22. His grandfather worked in the Belfast shipyards and he has a strong emotional attachment to the city. But, through age and attitude, he has always presented himself as a post-Troubles child and determinedly made light of the Border divide.
McIlroy has always wanted sports fans from the entire island to follow him on his journey, if they so wished. And he has always celebrated the fact that he is just a sports fan, a regular at the rugby in Ravenhill. It is just one of the ways in which he has subtly tried to make the point that, apart from his aptitude at golf, he is the same as the rest of us.
McIlroy’s victory was the most incandescent example of the fact that sport has provided one of the few sources of national pride since Ireland’s economic health and international prestige went into a tailspin. Even in the relatively brief period since 2008 the variety and quality of Irish sports people has been a gemstone of reliability.
That McIlroy has managed to retain for Northern Ireland the US Open trophy won by his friend, the Portrush golfer Graeme McDowell, is remarkable in its own right. But when Pádraig Harrington’s second consecutive British Open victory in 2008 and Shane Lowry’s fearless Irish Open win as an amateur in 2009 are added to the accomplishments of the Northerners, Ireland’s recent golf story begins to look crowded and glittering.
Then there are the other shining moments: Leinster’s European Cup wins of 2009 and this year, following Munster’s previous triumphs; Ireland’s rugby Grand Slam of 2009; the remarkable show put on by Ireland’s boxers at the Beijing Olympics, and Ray Moylette and Joe Ward’s golds at the European Championships yesterday; Derval O’Rourke’s silver medal in the 100m hurdles at last summer’s European championships; Olive Loughnane’s silver medal for the 20km walk at the 2009 world championships in Berlin; Ruby Walsh and Cheltenham; boxer Katie Taylor’s unstoppable momentum; the startling times posted by Wexford swimmer Gráinne Murphy; and that day of splendour for Irish cricket in Bangalore.
Some of these accomplishments are partially due to the strategic planning and investment of the various sporting bodies, but they are, for the most part, down to the solitary work ethic and natural talent of the athletes involved.
After this summer the anticipation of the London Olympics will begin to intensify. Olympic athletes have the lifespan of butterflies when it comes to public attention. For the fortnight of the games they are omnipresent, and their entire careers are often judged largely on what happens there. We forget about the obscure years that precede those 14 days of Olympic glitter and cheer. Throughout the freeze of last winter Gráinne Murphy was swimming laps in the swimming pool at the University of Limerick every day at dawn. Katie Taylor was jumping rope, O’Rourke was practising, resting, practising. Sport can be a desperately solitary business.
Six years ago, on his way to winning the West of Ireland Championship, Rory McIlroy became involved in a riveting struggle with 18-year-old Alan Glynn, who grew up in Harrow, England, with Irish parentage. McIlroy had to make a six-metre putt just to get into a play-off, and the pair shared three play-off holes before McIlroy finally made good. The crowd, an estimated 300 people, were spellbound by the drama. Afterwards Glynn generously recognised that the younger player had not tapped into his finest game.
By then McIlroy had reached a turning point in his young life. In the first few months of the year he had travelled to Hong Kong, California and Spain in pursuit of tournaments. He was notionally a 15-year-old schoolkid, but persevering with the illusion that he could attend school was pointless, so he decided to leave Sullivan Upper and concentrate solely on his golf game.
Among the reverential pieces written about McIlroy this week, praising his articulacy in particular, was one in Sports Illustrated, whose cover he graces beneath the stark headline, "Golf's New Era". The flattering international portraits of McIlroy and, by extension, Ireland, are like a balm after two years of in-depth economic critiques of the buffoonery and greed that came to characterise the country's reputation. Two years after the lacerating "Erin Go Broke" headline became the most-read article in the New York Times, the newspaper ran the headline, "Northern Ireland Hails McIlroy, a 'Celtic Tiger'". It has been a long time since the much-maligned Tiger has been used in anything other than a derisory sense.
Almost three years have passed since the teeming nights in Beijing when Irish boxers excelled in the Workers’ Stadium. It is hard to think of those triumphs without recalling the words of the late Darren Sutherland. “I don’t want to get emotional,” he said after the fight that guaranteed him a medal placing. “But four years of hard, hard work has paid off. To come back from that injury and to stand before you as an Olympic medallist . . . it’s amazing.”
Consider Sutherland’s path: three years as a teenager spent toiling in Brendan Ingle’s gym in Sheffield, back in Dublin at 20 with no job, deciding to study for the Leaving Certificate, a serious eye injury that nearly finished his sporting life. He toiled for that medal and then the nation enjoyed his moment. Sutherland’s journey was brave, but even more so when you consider the prevailing mood in Ireland, which encouraged most 20-year-olds to envisage themselves as tycoons. It makes sporting achievement seem all the more singular.
Sutherland’s tragically early death in autumn 2009 was all the more shocking because it is easy to forget that the grimmest turns in life can inflict themselves even on sporting heroes who appear invincible in the arena. But at least the legacy of his feats in the boxing ring stand as immovable tributes to his spirit and character.
Perhaps that is why the sporting highlights have come to matter so deeply in recent years. As economists and politicians sift through the debris of a turbulent decade trying to identify something more meaningful than deserted houses and a taste for boutique coffee as the legacy of the Celtic Tiger, the more significant and substantial Irish sporting achievements seem. They haven’t disappeared or been exposed as fraudulent. There is no bitter aftertaste. It is not about money – the breathless predictions about the potential billion-and-counting that Rory McIlroy stands to earn miss the point. The thrill of watching McIlroy playing his golf last weekend is in essence the same thrill that people get from watching amateurs duel for the hurling and football All-Ireland titles in September.
These are grave and humbling days. More than ever it is the athletes and the ball-players who point the way towards excellence and inspiration and joy in a small, battered country. Next year at the London Olympics – and, who knows, at the European football championships – further glittering Irish sports stories may await. After a week like this, anything seems possible.
