This mature version of Rory McIlroy is proving to be quite the ticket. Where his role as a player director on the PGA Tour’s board has led him to become the most vocal and articulate of those advocates of the traditional main professional circuit in circling the wagons against the start-up LIV Golf, his actions – as demonstrated in lifting the season-ending Tour Championship and scooping the $18 million jackpot in winning the FedEx Cup playoffs – have spoken louder than any words.
McIlroy is box office, the player with X-factor. And while a Major title evaded his clutches through 2022, most tantalisingly of all in the 150th Open at St Andrews, the 31-year-old Northern Irishman’s season, which started with a win in the CJ Cup on the wraparound schedule last October, was bookended by another win in the finale, with all of the financial rewards and legacy offerings that go with the Tour Championship.
As Paul Azinger put it on American network NBC’s coverage of his duel down the stretch with world number one Scottie Scheffler, “he beat the best player in the world heads-up in the last group from six shots behind. Rory has had a monster year!”
In what has been a tumultuous year for men’s professional golf, fractured by the arrival of LIV’s wad of greenbacks which has enticed some players to jump ship, McIlroy managed to find focus once inside the ropes. And nowhere more so than in playing the role of pursuer to get the job done at East Lake in Atlanta where, again, he showed himself to be unbeatable when bringing his A-game to the party.
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A FedEx Cup winner in 2016 and again in 2019, his third success made him a history-maker, joking afterwards that not even Tiger Woods had managed such a feat. But it also reaffirmed his belief that on his day he can deliver on the big days.
“Back in 2019 I took down the number one player in the world in Brooks Koepka. This year I took down the number one player in the world in Scottie Scheffler. So I know that my best stuff is good enough to win any tournament against anybody on any golf course. That’s something I can take away from [this win].”
It’s going to be hard for me to stomach going to Wentworth and seeing 18 of them there, that just doesn’t sit right with me
— Rory McIlroy
McIlroy’s celebration plans include indulging in some red wine with Shane Lowry in the coming days, and also of celebrating his daughter Poppy’s birthday, but that off-time will amount to just a full week before he gets back to work again with next week’s BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, kicking off a spell of three events in four weeks in Europe that will also take in the Italian Open and the Dunhill Links.
Having won the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup, McIlroy – who currently heads the DP World Tour’s Race to Dubai standings – will look to compete the double with those events in Wentworth, Italy and Scotland hopefully consolidating his position before the season finale in Dubai in November.
Of course, that visit to play the flagship BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth will mean playing in a tournament that – due to the legal injunction in play – will also feature many of those players who moved to LIV, among them Ian Poulter, Sergio Garcia, Patrick Reed and Lee Westwood.
McIlroy, indeed, spoke strongly about his feelings in the wake of this latest win and ahead of travelling to London next week: “I hate what it’s doing to the game of golf. I hate it. I really do. It’s going to be hard for me to stomach going to Wentworth and seeing 18 of them there, that just doesn’t sit right with me.”
No one can doubt where McIlroy stands on any issue, that’s for sure. “It’s been a tumultuous time for the world of men’s professional golf in particular. I’ve been right in the middle of it. I’ve picked a great time to go on the PGA Tour board. I’ve been in the thick of things. I guess every chance I get, I’m trying to defend what I feel is the best place to play elite professional golf in the world.”
Certainly, the best way ultimately proved to be to let his clubs do the talking for him in again showing his star appeal.
While the PGA Tour takes a break before the Fortinet Championship kick-starts the new 2022/23 season in mid-September, this week’s DP World Tour stop is the Made in Himmerland championship in Denmark where Jonny Caldwell, aiming to stem a run of seven missed cuts, Cormac Sharvin, Paul Dunne and Gavin Moynihan are all playing.
