During the summer of his golfing life, in 2014, Rory McIlroy was famously booze-free; the abstinence bringing two majors and a World Golf Championships title as he rose to world number one.
Having won The Open that year, followed by the Bridgestone Invitational and US PGA, I asked him if it was finally time to toast his success? “Oh yes, I’m going to be celebrating this,” he laughed.
Contrast that reaction to how he talked in the wake of Sunday’s landmark triumph at the Players Championship.
“I’m going to sit down and see what I can take from this and try to put it into the next few weeks,” he said in an interview for the BBC Golf podcast, The Cut. He is fully aware the Masters is just around the corner.
McIlroy will still celebrate and enjoy this Players victory, and so he should. But that analytical response speaks to the maturity of the 29 year old, who ended an increasingly frustrating run of near misses with this win. It was a special success. McIlroy prevailed on a packed leaderboard finding real inspiration on a back nine that might have unravelled with his bogey on the 14th. “Maybe, if this had not gone the way I wanted it to, it might have eaten away at me,” McIlroy told me.
But it did not and that fact should silence a growing band of critics who increasingly believed that he lacked the nerve and heart to win the game’s biggest prizes.
While they fretted over his inability to convert that string of promising positions, they questioned everything from the Northern Irishman’s mental state, ability to putt, work ethic and choice of caddie. But the player stayed resolutely patient. “I feel every week I’ve contended I’ve been more comfortable in contention,” McIlroy said of his recent frustrations.
“I just kept going, doing what I’ve been doing all year, biding my time trying to hit good shot after good shot. Thankfully it all came together.”
He insists he has not been as frustrated by the year long winless spell that has just ended as many people would expect. “I’m playing better golf than the majority of people out there,” he said.
