GOLF TOUR NEWS:AS LIFE-changing moments go, this was the way to do it. Rory McIlroy's groundbreaking win in the Quail Hollow Championship on Sunday – giving the Ulsterman a maiden win on the USPGA Tour but, probably just as importantly, providing him with the platform to take the next step in pursuit of a major title – was, quite simply, good for golf.
Also, significantly, McIlroy’s victory – and the manner of it – is likely to open a gateway to future corporate endorsement deals in the United States, the biggest financial market in the sport.
After all, his fresh-faced appearance and interaction with the crowds was the perfect complement to a golf swing that down the stretch was as near to perfection as can be found. The guy has everything.
McIlroy’s image and marketability is a sponsor’s dream come true and those already on board – principally Titleist, Lough Erne and Jumeirah – will no doubt be glad that their current deals extend until 2012, a deliberate long-term strategy by his management group ISM designed so that the player could focus on his golf game.
That he won’t turn 21 until today, two days before he tees up at The Players Championship as the player shining the torch for golf’s new golden generation, makes his onward and upward rise all the more compelling.
Now back in to the world’s top-10, in ninth position, McIlroy’s win has brought him other privileges including a two-year exemption on the PGA Tour, a place in the field for next season’s opening tournament, the Mercedes championship in Hawaii, and a guarantee of competing in at least the first two tournaments of this season-ending FedEx Cup run.
What a turnabout in fortunes inside a month! After he missed the cut at the US Masters, McIlroy – visibly downbeat – talked of taking a break from the sport, possibly for as long as the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.
As his manager Chubby Chandler observed yesterday, all McIlroy needed was some time at home in Holywood to allow “clutter flow from his head”.
“I was second guessing everything I was doing,” admitted McIlroy, of how this thoughts were swirling. The magic recipe also involved playing some golf at Royal Co Down and Royal Portrush, where his caddie JP Fitzgerald listened to his employer wonder why he hadn’t taken off to play in Korea that week.
Fitzgerald’s reaction was to tell McIlroy: “What’s the point in wanting to go to Korea to play when you can just go next week and win at Quail Hollow.”
Of Fitzgerald’s role in his rise up in the rankings, McIlroy made the point. “JP has been great on the bag for the last, nearly two years now. He’s brought me from 190th in the world to the top-10, and he’s been a big part of that.”
McIlroy, though, was the one who hit the shots. And if his run of six successive threes to finish the final round in style allowed him to sprint clear of the field, finishing four shots ahead of runner-up Phil Mickelson, it was a four-iron approach shot over water to the seventh – his 16th – in Friday’s third round to set up eagle which turned his game around.
He believed that to be the “most important shot of the year, to be honest. If I don’t make eagle there, I’m practising at Ponte Vedra (for the weekend)”.
That eagle allowed him to make the cut, and, as McIlroy put it himself, “the rest is history”.
At a time when world number one Tiger Woods is seeking to mend his life, it’s ironic that a group of young players who used him as their benchmark should explode onto the scene.
McIlroy, at ninth in the world, is at the top of that group but teenager Ryo Ishikawa, who shot a final round 58 in winning the Crownes tournament in Japan on Sunday, and 17-year-old Matteo Manassero, who makes his pro debut in this week’s Italian Open, are the faces of a new emerging generation.
“Tiger was the guy we all looked up to and the guy that we followed and the guy that we turned on our TV for and why we went out to practice so hard. He’s been the reason that the likes of Ryo, myself, AK (Anthony Kim), Danny Lee, all the younger guys, have flourished at such an early age . . . we want to achieve that. He’s been a big reason for this influence of so many younger players,” said McIlroy.
As he proved at Quail Hollow, where he became the youngest winner on the PGA Tour since Woods in 1996, McIlroy – on his game – has no peers. Although this was his first win on the US Tour, it gave him a second professional title to add to last year’s breakthrough win on the PGA European Tour when he captured the Dubai Desert Classic.
What now? “I just want to concentrate on getting a few more wins, (to) learn as much as I can at the majors. It takes a while to figure them out . . . but, you know, if I went to a major championship and played like this over the weekend, I probably would win as well. But I’m just looking forward to getting that next win. Hopefully, I’ll look forward to a few more.”
As McIlroy heads into this week’s Players that quest for more titles is one to be embraced.
And you’ve got to think that the old walls of Holywood Golf Club in Co Down – where score cards recording various course records at Royal Portrush, a signed replica flag from the British Open at Carnoustie in 2007 where he was leading amateur and a framed photocopy of an old newspaper article relating his achievement in winning the world juniors as a nine-year-old – will become a wee bit more cluttered over time.
The world, most definitely, is McIlroy’s oyster.
