TROON, Scotland – Over the previous week, Rory McIlroy has tried to explain, in intimate element, what these first few days have been like after blowing the U.S. Open, press conferences that, at occasions, have felt extra like group remedy periods.
How by the point McIlroy walked by way of the entrance door that Sunday he already had acquired about 15 texts from media members, searching for remark after he sped out of Pinehurst – an indication, he mentioned later, that it was time for him to vary his telephone quantity.
How he strolled Manhattan’s Excessive Line, AirPods in, shifting about virtually anonymously amid the hustle and bustle of America’s busiest metropolis – a pleasant perspective to maintain, he mentioned, that “nobody gave a s–t if I missed the putt at Pinehurst.”
And the way, over the course of 96 hours, he progressed from dejection to understanding to enthusiasm – not the 5 phases of grief, per se, however comprehensible nonetheless.
“It’s humorous how your mindset can go from I-don’t-want-to-see-a-golf-course-for-a-month to, like, 4 days later, I can’t wait to get one other shot at it,” McIlroy mentioned Tuesday. “When that disappointment turns to motivation, that’s when it’s time to go once more.”
And that point has arrived right here at Royal Troon as McIlroy tries to show all that he’s discovered in what shall be his closing shot at redemption for 9 lengthy months.
Certain, technically, McIlroy returned to competitors final week on the Scottish Open, the place he recorded one other top-5 end. It was a efficiency that bolstered a couple of issues about him: That his lengthy sport stays in high type, as as soon as once more he led the sphere from tee to inexperienced; that he must spend extra time on and across the greens, refamiliarizing himself with the slower inexperienced speeds and distinctive fescue grasses of hyperlinks golf; and that he’s extra resilient than typically given credit score for.
As tempting because it was to declare within the second, the Pinehurst Open wasn’t truly McIlroy’s most crushing defeat. At the very least to not him. That was the 2011 Masters, the place he held a four-shot lead and shot a Sunday 80. Or perhaps it was the 2022 Open, when he hit each inexperienced within the closing spherical however made simply two birdies to fall quick on the residence of golf.
These outcomes would have damaged lesser gamers. As an alternative, each occasions, he bounced again – shortly. Two months after his collapse at Augusta, he gained his first main in a rout at Congressional. And a month after crying on his spouse’s shoulder on the Previous Course, he stormed again to win a 3rd FedExCup title.
Over the previous 15 years, and in a number of methods, he has confirmed his sturdiness.
“Look, it was a fantastic alternative,” he mentioned final week. “It handed me by. However hopefully after I get that subsequent alternative, it gained’t move me by.”
This week he’s put in, appropriately, because the event’s second-leading favourite, behind solely world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler. That’s a nod to McIlroy’s latest report, but in addition his Open résumé: six top-6s in his previous eight begins. A kind of got here proper right here at Royal Troon, in 2016, when he contended fiercely for the B-flight title (16 photographs adrift of Henrik Stenson, however in a tie for fifth). That was within the early phases of a five-year interval that’s outlined largely by how few lifelike probabilities he gave himself so as to add to his main haul in his athletic prime. Over the previous three main season he has been much more aggressive – and he’ll take that tradeoff, even when it affords extra probabilities for devastation.
