The smiles belied his assassin’s instincts. When it mattered, Rory McIlroy delivered and it didn’t matter that the fall-guy in the drama was a favoured son of those watching his ice-cold completion of the job, as the Northern Irishman sensationally finished birdie-birdie for a closing 68 for a total of 15-under-par 265 to claim the Genesis Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club.
Poor Robert MacIntyre. In truth, the left-handed Scot had played the best golf of anybody in a final round which brought early-morning alarm calls to get the tournament finished before the forecast bad weather front enveloped the East Lothian linksland.
In signing for a remarkable 64 – highlighted by a magnificent birdie on the last, where he hit a fairway wood approach of 212 yards from the rough to 10 feet – MacIntyre, with his Irish caddie Greg Milne, had set the clubhouse target and left him watching McIlroy’s pursuit on TV, and then shifted to the practice ground in the case of a playoff.
It never happened.
Instead, McIlroy, the 54-holes leader but out-of-sorts on the front nine where he had four bogeys and two priceless birdies in turning in 37, got his act together on a wonderfully navigated back nine where he didn’t drop another shot. He also claimed four birdies to puncture the home fans’ hopes of a Scottish success in the event, co-sanctioned on the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour.
If McIlroy’s failure to birdie the par-five 16th had raised MacIntrye’s hopes of a breakthrough win on the PGA Tour and its career-changing possibilities, his play of the par-three 17th and the notoriously difficult 18th in the teeth of the 25-mile-an-hour wind showcased his brilliance.
Firstly, McIlroy rolled in a five-footer for birdie on the 17th to move level with MacIntyre. Then, on the 18th, after his drive finished in the first cut, actually finishing up in an old divot, McIlroy and caddie Harry Diamond eventually settled on a two-iron for the approach from 202 yards. It was beautifully executed, cutting through the wind on a right-to-left approach that settled 10 feet from the pin.
If his task was made a tad more difficult by watching one of his playing partners, Tom Kim, three-putt for double-bogey from inside that distance, as the American sought to finish and get out of McIlroy’s way, it didn’t derail him. McIlroy might have thought the ball was going to drift from its line halfway to the cup but it did drop and brought a huge smile to his face as he savoured a first win of the year on the PGA Tour and a second win of the season on the DP World Tour, to go with his Dubai Desert Classic win back in January.
The win earned him a €1.4 million payday and increased McIlroy’s lead at the top of the DP World Tour order of merit and gave him prized momentum heading to the 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool, where he won the last time it was staged there in 2014.
“I’m really proud. That was such a tough day, so tough, especially the back nine. To play that back nine four-under par to win the tournament, yeah, really proud of how I just stuck in there.
“I hit some amazing shots down the stretch and was able to finish it off with a really nice putt there. It feels incredible. It’s been a sort of long six months I feel since I won in Dubai. I’ve given myself tons of chances, and hopefully this win sort of breaks the seal for me, especially going into next week as well,” said McIlroy.
Of the tournament-winning approach shot to the 18th green, McIlroy explained:
“I was right between four-iron and two-iron. I took three-iron out [of the bag] at the start of the week, and it probably was a perfect three-iron. But four-iron was only getting to the front edge of the green; two-iron, had to cut it and try to get it up into the wind a little bit and I just hit this two-iron and it came off absolutely perfectly. Probably the best shot I hit all year. It was exactly the way I wanted to play it.
“When you hit a shot like that, I felt like I deserved to hole that putt to finish it off.”
