Rory McIlroy - 4 Time Major Winner

Tayto man you are time travelling.

I made that comment after a tournament 6 weeks ago.

My observation made last night was that the wrong club selected on the par 3 was where the rot set in. Course management demanded a club that could not go long.

Again course management got him on the 18th. Apart from two poor putts obviously, decision making cost him badly.

Brilliant article from Golf Digest writer who followed Rory up close. Puts a lot in perspective.

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/us-open-2024-rory-mcilroy

The two poor putts were the difference between winning and losing. It's that simple.

I don’t think it’s disrespectful to Bryson to say McIlroy lost it. Yes Bryson took advantage of McIlroys mistakes, but he did so unconvincingly (with the exception of the bunker shot) and was over par for the last 4 holes after McIlroy went 2 ahead with 5 to play. McIlroy was leading by two, dropped 3 shots in the last 4 holes including two short putts. I don’t think anyone watching that would conclude anything other than McIlroy let that one slip away, hence his understandable devastation.

Not long, Asdfgh2020 got in there ahead of everyone else.

In!!

There was never a “British” Open

And Rory has won two Open Championshios I believe.

Edit: one… 2014

I find some of the commentary on Rory very, very unpleasant. Booting a man when he's down with some really hyperbolic language. Heard Newstalk this morning and a chat between a presenter who knows nothing about sport (Ciara Kelly) and a fella who has never played sport to any level (John Duggan) and they were using words like "embarrassing", "choked" and "meltdown". There's a person on the end of this who I'd bet is in a pretty bad place right now mentally. Irresponsible chatter from two people who should know better. I'm sure Rory wasn't listening to Newstalk but that sort of stuff builds a narrative that just needs feeding to reach him in some form or other.

Really hope he comes back and wins a couple of majors. He's a wonderful player and seems a decent lad too IMO. Yeah the last 4 holes on Sunday were poor (especially after a brilliant first 14) but he isn't the first great golfer to do it and won't be the last.

Article in the Irish Times and headline below.

A disgrace.

There is a sickness in sport and articles like these are one of the root causes of the issue.

It's everything you don't want to read or hear in sports and sports writing

Its also factually wrong.

I've copied the full article (and included the link) I would encourage you not to give him the click. Its also a 'subscribers only'

'choked'

"mental breakdown"

"dweebier"

Toxic language and ALL about winning.
NO its not.
This mentality is perpetuated by sports writers/hacks.
It manifests itself in how our children engage in sports.
Nothing about sportsmanship, sincerity & honesty in the game. Or the great competitive nature that was on display.

Golf is a great game. Unquestionably all those in contention were giving 100% of themselves.

These are the values that should be championed.

Mon Jun 17 2024 - 10:02

This wasn’t about Bryson DeChambeau’s bunker shot or McIlroy’s perennially put-upon caddie - it was about the scrambled brain that led to two short putts being missed when everything was on the line

This one is going to linger. It has to. In the days and weeks and surely even years to come, Rory McIlroy is going to feel the sting of what happened in those 23 minutes on Sunday night at Pinehurst. Extending his 10-year purgatory without a major is one thing. Finding a completely new way to come up short is another. Especially when there’s nobody to blame but himself.

Missing two putts inside four feet in any round is bad for any pro golfer. Doing it in the final three holes to lose a US Open by a shot means everything else melts away. Every other factor in the result becomes irrelevant.

Bryson DeChambeau’s bunker shot for all time? Couldn’t have mattered less had McIlroy sunk the two putts. Those curious club/shot selections down the stretch? A wry footnote at worst, something to laugh about through the puffed cheeks of victory. Backing off shots in the closing holes? Understandable nerves, actually quite sweet in a way – as long as the putts go down.

But they didn’t.

This wasn’t Harry Diamond’s fault. McIlroy’s perennially picked-upon caddie got his man to the 70th green of a US Open with a one-shot lead and a 30-inch putt for par. Nothing a bagman can do in that scenario but presume his boss will see it out. It wasn’t down to a Cam Smith-style run of birdies from an opponent on a hot streak either – DeChambeau had his worst score of the week and played his last five holes in one over par.

No, this one is entirely on McIlroy. He choked, plain and simple. He did everything right until he got within sight of the finish line and then he did everything wrong. His putter, which had been such a laser-guided weapon all week and particularly on Sunday, turned into a jelly snake right at the moment of highest tension and sharpest consequence. This can only have been due to a mental meltdown.

As the leading golf statto Justin Ray pointed out, McIlroy had faced 496 putts inside three feet all season standing on the 16th green and had made all 496 of them. He had holed them in every circumstance, from early Thursday mornings to late Sunday evenings and all imaginable scenarios in between. Of the countless ways for his challenge to fall apart, every analyst of his game would have got a long way down the list before landing on his short putting.

The days of people watching him through their fingers as he stood over important putts were long gone, we thought. At Pinehurst on Sunday, he was having one of the great putting days of his career. Even with the two tiddlers missed down the stretch, the cold numbers say he still ranked eighth in the field for strokes gained putting in the final round.

His technique was sound, his speed was on the money – so many of his putts died in the hole, a clear indication that he and Diamond had worked out the puzzle of Pinehurst’s baked, humpbacked greens across the week. He was like a Vegas magician who had built his illusion step-by-step and layer-by-layer. He had the audience sitting forward in their seats agog, ready for the last big flourish of the reveal.

Except now, when he reached into his top hat, there was no rabbit to pull out. The easiest part of the trick had become the most difficult. All the lights were on him, all the trumpets were tuned and ready. All the scrapes and calluses of a decade’s toil in the majors were about to get their payoff. And the weight of it crushed him.

The psychodrama will play out over the next while, as it must. It will be fascinating to see how he handles it. He’s down to play the Travellers Championship this week. Will he turn up? If he does, will he do a press conference? Will he talk about choking, that great unspeakable bogeyman taboo of golf?

He should. If nothing else, it would take the sting out of the phrase for everyone. Choking happens to all golfers at one stage or another, yet none of them ever cop to it. For a crowd of lads who are typically among the dweebier end of the sporting population, there’s a drearily macho refusal to ever admit to mental fragility. McIlroy could change all that, if he liked.

It would be understandable if he didn’t feel that was a priority this week, obviously. But it might do him some good at the same time. He has to find some way of moving on from this.

How he goes about it will keep the rest of us agog for a while yet.

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/golf/2024/06/17/rory-mcilroy-choked-at-the-us-open-and-he-has-nobody-to-blame-but-himself/

Malachy Clerkin you are a hack.

Gutter journalism.

& once again I'm no fan of McIlroy but the person and sport do not deserve this type of coverage.

Which bit is factually wrong?

that article reads pretty true so I don't know why you think it's gutter journalism

"McIlroy’s perennially picked-upon caddie got his man to the 70th green of a US Open with a one-shot lead and a 30-inch putt for par".

The line above is factually wrong. They were all square at this point.

"He did everything right until he got within sight of the finish line and then he did everything wrong."

The line above is also not fair. He hit a wonderful pitch under tremendous pressure on the 18th to within 4 feet. He also held a good nervy putt on the 17th considering what had happened on 16. He didn't "completely" choke.

"McIlroy had faced 496 putts inside three feet all season standing on the 16th green and had made all 496 of them. "

While it may be factually true, also a bit disingenuous. How many of these were inside 1 foot? The greens were treacherous. It's a fact that I didn't miss any putts inside 3 feet at the 2024 US Open.

I don't think he choked completely but he had successfully sank 46 putts in a row from that distance and then missed 2 in three holes. Something changed.