Watching the best golfers in the world play golf is normally interesting on its own. Watching the best golfers in the world think and attempt to control their emotions is one of the most fascinating things in all of sports.
Anybody can get on YouTube and pull up clips of great golf. Much of it looks the same, even if it's not. One can easily find a random clip of a halfway-decent amateur golfer hitting a drive and pull up another of Jon Rahm hitting a drive next to that person. The trajectories, ball speeds and general direction of the shot -- all of it will look similar. It would take a launch monitor display to understand that it not.
The point is that watching world-class golfers hit golf balls can begin to feel uniform. What never gets tiresome, though, is experiencing the arc of human emotion: the triumph and the tragedy.
Golf is golf. While its nuances are complex, there are limits. The well of human emotion and how it plays out in each of our lives, though? It is something seemingly endless.
Rory McIlroy has experienced every emotion one can muster as a professional golfer. The thrill of dominance as a young supernova. The despair of (relative) failure as an aging great. Everything in between.
The last time McIlroy took the stage at a major championship, he was doing nothing at all, and it was the most intrigue he elicited all week. After 275 strokes at Pinehurst No. 2 left him one shot shy of a U.S. Open playoff with Bryson DeChambeau -- after he held the tournament in his hands with just a few holes to go -- there was McIlroy, standing next to a Coca-Cola refrigerator, leaning on a table, staring as a nightmare unfolded in front of him.
What could be more compelling than that?
oh man pic.twitter.com/TzeMUWo3uP
— Dylan Dethier (@dylan_dethier) June 16, 2024
There are no questions about his game. He has not finished outside the top 15 at an event since the week after the Masters. Of the players in the 2024 Open Championship field, only Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele have been better in terms of strokes gained since Jan. 1. McIlroy is his usual top-five-player-in-the-world self. He again finished T4 at the Scottish Open last week at The Renaissance Club after winning the event last season.
"Game's in really good shape," McIlroy said Tuesday. "Had a nice reset after Pinehurst that was needed and felt like I shook off a little bit of the rust last week and played OK. Felt like I probably could have given myself more of a chance to win the tournament.
"I thought it was a solid week. Again, it's like one eye on preparing for this week but another eye on trying to get into contention as well. Overall, I've been in the UK now for a couple of weeks, and it's felt nice to get back over here and get back into the swing of things."
McIlroy has been dominant at The Open over the course of his career.
| Year | Course | Finish | Strokes Gained |
|---|---|---|---|
2023 | Royal Liverpool | T6 | 3.15 |
2022 | St. Andrews | 3 | 3.93 |
2021 | Royal St. George's | T46 | 0.73 |
2019 | Royal Portrush | MC | 0.19 |
2018 | Carnoustie | T2 | 3.07 |
2017 | Royal Birkdale | T4 | 2.80 |
2016 | Royal Troon | T5 | 3.38 |
2014 | Royal Liverpool | Won | 4.90 |
2013 | Muirfield | MC | -1.99 |
2012 | Royal Lytham & St. Annes | T60 | 0.32 |
2011 | Royal St. George's | T25 | 1.76 |
| 2010 | St. Andrews | T3 | 3.13 |
| 2009 | Turnberry | T47 | 0.73 |
| 2007 | Carnoustie | T42 | 0.93 |
Since Rory started playing Opens back in 2007, he ranks second among all players (who have played at least 20 rounds) in strokes gained at 2.15. The only golfer with a better number is Jordan Spieth at 2.40 strokes gained, though he's played 12 fewer rounds.
McIlroy checks all the boxes: Recent play, recent Opens, Open history, recent majors. He has finished in the top eight across nine of his last 13 major appearances, a truly preposterous number. It would be stunning if Rory did not play well this week at Royal Troon. His floor is extraordinarily high.
But this isn't really about floors and ceilings anymore, is it?
It's about what's going on in the depths of a player when he's wild-eyed on the last nine holes of a 72-hole tournament -- desperate to cash in all that great play for a single trophy.
It's about how McIlroy's face is contorting when he's three up on Xander Schauffele and two on Tyrrell Hatton with five holes left and nowhere else to go but toward the clubhouse and into either long-awaited history or a nine-month offseason in which there is nothing else to do but wish.
"No, not surprised [that I felt uncomfortable late at Pinehurst]," McIlroy said. "The last few holes of a major championship -- with a great chance to win -- if you're not feeling it, then it probably doesn't mean as much to you as it should. No, it wasn't a surprise. It was just more a disappointment that I didn't handle those uneasy feelings as good as I could have."
McIlroy wants the arena, though. He wants to reenter it, no matter what that means. He said this week that he's willing to put himself back out there, and he even looks forward to doing so. This has been a career that -- at least for the last 10 years -- has been predicated on Rory putting himself back out there time and again at majors despite so many excruciating close calls.
"I would say maybe, like three or four days after, [I] went from being very disappointed and dejected to trying to focus on the positives to then wanting to learn from the negatives and then getting to the point where you become enthusiastic and motivated to go again," McIlroy said.
"So, it probably took three, four, five days. It's funny how your mindset can go from, 'I don't want to see a golf course for a month' to like four days later being, 'Can't wait to get another shot at it.' When that disappointment turns to motivation, that's when it's time to go again."
It is rare that the best players also possess the most texture. It is uncommon that a body which produces the best golf shots simultaneously houses the being who produces the most intrigue.
Rory McIlroy's golf this week will be compelling -- just not half as much as his disposition and emotional state throughout the tournament. He is an extremely emotional person (ever watched him at a Ryder Cup?), and his situation -- an all-time great who has not won a major in 10 years entering The Open of a crushing loss the last time out -- is quite unusual, even by golf standards.
What will it produce?
While it will be easy to look up at where the shots fall in relation to the ground and the sea and the pin and the leaderboard, I instead urge you to look down to see what they do to the man and his face and his strut and his heart. One of those will produce a performance we can (and probably will) talk about for years. The other will produce a fascination of which there is no end.
