Rory's Glory (2 page)

The picturesque golf course, which overlooks Belfast Harbour and its towering Harland & Wolffe cranes, is actually very tough looking and (for want of better words to describe ‘hilly') very undulating.

H&W also served to remind us that this company gave much needed employment to many Northern Ireland families down through the decades. Rory's grandfather even worked those famous Belfast docks which would later launch the ill-fated Titanic.

Rory's family were directly affected by ‘The Troubles'. An uncle of his was murdered, and that turbulent time is probably an underlying reason why he has clearly distanced himself from England and Ireland – he is staunchly Northern Ireland.

This in mind, it was then time to concentrate on the all-important business of golf and Rory's early days. His glittering early career was delved into, his time as an amateur at boys and youth level culminating in him becoming world champion at the Doral under-12s tournament in Florida.

His first European win as a pro in Dubai is remembered and proudly framed upstairs in the Holywood clubhouse. A memento of his first trip to the US Masters is also present on the wall with a famous yellow flag from a hole at Augusta that he eagled!

All the glorious details of his US Open win (as well as the trauma of his Masters meltdown) were covered and a book about anyone's life would not be a complete, or a fair assessment, if controversies were not dealt with – and they were.

So akin to a doctor getting a sense of his patient's wellbeing by observation, the trip north, as well as all the subsequent research, proved very worthwhile. Many pinpoint and accurate readings and predictions emanated from the start to the finish of that book.

Gary Player's opening foreword was a case in point. When I was a kid, I worshipped this golfer simply because my father so admired him. Player was small and slim in stature and I loved his immaculate jet-black polo neck and slacks and his lighter coloured caps.

To have him write the foreword was a fantastic honour but what he said in his piece was even more apt and pertinent. He talked about the differences between golf in his time and now.

He talked about how golf, back then, was a means to earning a living for him and his family, in contrast to the modern age where there is so much money about; how the media were a big part of the close-knit golfing tour party, which is not the case today.

Today's media, he said, are in search of salacious stories, and Rory would become all too aware of that. He would have to deal with all of this and a lot more pressure while still being expected to win majors consistently and become one of the best players in the game.

His final words were the most telling:

Rory, YOU have the game, now go out and show the world that you have the desire. Remember, ‘the harder you practise the luckier you get'.

I will refer back to those final words of Gary's in a few moments but there were some sentiments of my own from the first book which were to prove correct – and others that were just a little off the mark!

The book went to press in November 2011 with the publishers receiving my completed manuscript by 1 October. On page 113, in the opening line of chapter nine ‘Root of the Problem', I wrote:

If there is one major besides the US Open that Rory McIlroy seems destined to win, it is the USPGA.

Ten months later, and after playing in three preceding majors without any success, Rory did indeed win that USPGA. In fact, he won his second major with ease and by the exact same winning margin as his first major US Open triumph – eight shots.

Other notable things were talked about and came to pass. There was the question of his ‘patriotic allegiances' towards either Team GB or Ireland which, just a few months into 2102, really took off in a huge way with the worldwide media.

The pressure Rory endured during that entire episode, until he finally made a decision in the summer of 2014, was immense. In fact it was so tough that Graeme McDowell pleaded with authorities to make the decision for Rory, citing the huge strain and effect.

In this book his wins, as well as the highs and lows of 2012 and 2014, will be dealt with. But sandwiched in between both of those seasons was a 2013 bereft of big successes and replaced by a total loss of top form.

So much so that Rory, for all his genius and God-given golf talents, had serious doubts whether he would ever reach the heady heights of major glory again. Be under no other illusions – 2013 was a very worrying time.

This period, which I cover in this book under the chapter entitled ‘The Doldrums', left the sporting public with grave doubts about McIlroy's merits as a future superstar of world golf.

There was no way he could emulate or eclipse the great Tiger Woods with his sudden downturn in top form. Suddenly, from the best from of his life to the worst, a wave of pessimism pervaded concerning Rory.

Accompanying that pessimism was a large scale feeling that he was now just a ‘good time Charlie' enjoying and revelling in his romance with Caroline Wozniacki. Rory was making all the headlines off the course with very little to be said about him on it.

If it was not photographs or headlines of Rory in happy times at parties or away on holiday breaks with his beloved, then it was more worrying headlines of impending doom which made the news.

Missing cuts did not help his new multi million-dollar Nike contract and his switchover to using their clubs. As if the pressure of that was not bad enough, well known golfers were coming out in the media stating Rory had erred and could not get used to new clubs.

After leaving Chubby Chandler to join Horizon Sports Management (with whom he hit the ground running) and everything seeming so rosy in the garden, he then left them amid a legal dispute which looked likely to be settled in the highest courts in the land.

Everything golf related seemed to be crumbling and collapsing around him. His ‘blitzkrieg' form that won him two majors by eight shots was nowhere to be seen; he was missing cuts, he was missing months – but worse, he was fun-loving away on holidays!

All of these were precise echoes of what Gary Player had talked of in his foreword - public and media scrutiny, intrusion, constant pressure and the need to practise hard and make huge sacrifices.

Just when it seemed as if he would be an ‘also-ran', content, as Player said in his piece, ‘to settle for winning every once in a while', he answered what Gary (and Jack Nicklaus and the golfing Gods) had been seeking from Rory.

Off the golf course, and totally out of the blue, the need for ultimate sacrifice and hard practise was delivered by him in a most shocking and emphatic way to a worldwide audience.

It was THE building block he needed to single-handedly put in place a new construction of Rory Phase Two – and put it in place he did. Enjoy reading the story and reconstruction of an all new tower of strength.

A
fter the highs and lows of 2011 – the US Open win which followed his US Masters meltdown – another whirlwind of a rollercoaster ride befell Rory at the end of that season and into 2012.

On the face of it, statistics may point to Rory McIlroy having a fantastic end to 2011. However, behind the facts of his unbelievably brilliant purple patch, lies a story of what might have been amid all the frustrating near misses.

Add to that the hectic end-of-season schedule of golf tournaments all over the world – the constant travelling, catching up on much needed sleep in jets and hotels, eating and drinking on the move – and a big crash of some sort was awaiting Rory around the bend.

Let us not forget Rory was also a young adult dating tennis player Caroline Wozniacki. There were a lot of tournaments where Rory literally dashed from the clubhouse to catch a flight to rendezvous with her.

His destination was either to a tennis event she was playing in, to her home in Monaco or to some romantic holiday destination. It seemed on the outside as if Rory was enjoying sheer bliss. But there was one big question: was his golf suffering as a result of all this?

Perhaps not towards the end of that season, but before that, and after, many big names in the world of golf were criticising him heavily for it. It was just the start of a period of upheaval, uncertainty and great changes going on in his life – on and off the golf course.

Ultimately McIlroy is programmed very well. He knows what he wants and will do anything required to achieve his goals. Even if it means making huge changes in his personal and personnel life – and cutting long lasting ties – he won't shy away.

Nor will he dwell on the matter for any lengthy period. When he makes up his mind his actions are swift and instantaneous. Upsets in his life, which sometimes may cause him to lose form, do not last very long.

Rory seems to sense when he goes too far and overdoes things. Unlike someone who has had too much to drink and then spoils things for himself and others, he has this inbuilt mechanism which knows how to pull back from the brink of disaster and fix the problem.

In that respect he has consistently shown two main ways where he puts things right:

(i)   He desists from being in the company of an individual or individuals, meaning a split

(ii)  He employs/enlists an individual or individuals to help him in an area of concern

He first illustrated this in mid-October 2011 when leaving his management company International Sports Management (ISM), run by Andrew ‘Chubby' Chandler. It was a massive shock and it took the golfing world completely by surprise.

Behind the ‘thanks for all the help' and ‘I wish him all the best for the future' compliments and niceties which are almost always dished out when vacating a top position, nobody ever really knows the real reasons why sports stars (or others) leave a team.

The media will always surmise that it is mostly to do with money, contracts and working conditions. Sometimes though, it may go deeper and bears no relation to material things. Furthermore, Chubby Chandler and Rory McIlroy were a successful and winning team.

Who knows, but sometimes a golf genius like Rory, who is blessed with a great brain and vision, may see dangers down the line that he wants to steer clear of. It could have been that remaining in a stable with Westwood and Schwartzel was just not for him.

South African Charl Schwartzel was the player who stole Rory's thunder at the Masters, his outrageous chips and putts winning him the Green Jacket. Could Rory remain in ISM with Schwartzel's star rising? That is not to mention the Westwood factor.

Lee Westwood and Chubby are great buddies and their professional and personal relationship stretches back decades. A bit like the headmaster and his classroom pet, Westy was always top dog in the stable until Rory became the huge rising star.

In the weeks before the sensational split, Westwood and McIlroy engaged in a bit of friendly banter on twitter. At least, that is the way it seemed, until Westwood started that typical British trait of mickey-taking, and perhaps some of it irked Rory.

When Westy also brought up Chubby's name, perhaps Rory sensed that he would never really get the respect and recognition that he fully deserved as a major winner – something Lee Westwood has yet to achieve. One quip from Westwood read: ‘You hear that, Chubbs – he's even beginning to talk like Wozniacki now”' (referring to the fact that Rory showed the world the bond developing between him and tennis girlfriend Caroline Wozniacki by having ‘Wozzilroy' engraved on his clubs).

There is a well-known saying that three is a crowd, and with Rory in a stable with Westwood and Schwartzel (not to mention the fact that Chubby has always had a great rapport with Westwood) then Rory's decision to leave was no doubt the right one.

The day before he teed off in the WGC Champions event in Shanghai, he said in an interview on the European Tour website:

It's a decision I didn't take lightly. I thought long and hard about it and had a lot of chats with my mum and dad. Sometimes to go forward in your career, you just need to make decisions.

For four years I felt Chubby was the best guy and ISM were fantastic for me but sometimes to progress you need to have a fresh view on things. I feel a new environment around me may enable me to play even better and I feel I'm now moving on to the next stage of my career.

Chubby has been there for me since day one and it was very difficult for me. I remain very close to him – it was purely a business decision and nothing personal at all. I've got all the time in the world for Chubby.

The key line in that statement is where Rory says he feels like wanting ‘a new environment around me.' So if he had all the time in the world for Chubby, who had been great to him, who did he want to get away from in that environment, and why?

There is little doubt that apart from his mum and dad, Rory also discussed the situation with his great golfing buddy at the time, Graeme McDowell. McDowell also left Chubby three years previously and went on to win the US Open in 2010. McDowell said:

I've heard that I'm supposed to have enticed Rory – well I purposely took a back seat in it all. Rory makes his own decisions and doesn't listen to anybody. I certainly wasn't going to sway him about what to do with his career. Even if I could, he'd only resent it if it didn't work out.

McDowell also had a few very interesting things to say about the ‘reunion' of Westwood and McIlroy, who were paired together in Shanghai a few days after Rory left the team. Westwood's reaction to Rory leaving the team was to say ‘It's a bit bizarre.'

In an interview on the 25 October 2011, ‘G-Mac' (McDowell) said:

It's very ironic. They'll want to be out beating each other up obviously from a golf point of view. ‘Bizarre' is Lee Westwood's opinion but perhaps Rory just wants a different view on things. It's Rory McIlroy's decision and he's a very smart kid.