Rory McIlroy is a national treasure but it is time Irish sports fans learned to appreciate him
Rory McIlroy is world number three yet in the eyes of many Irish sports fans he is less popular than players with less talent.
Rory McIlroy has won way more than Shane Lowry or Leona Maguire ever will.
Four Majors, 45 tournaments, 20 Ryder Cup points, he also managed to recapture the soul of golf with a principled and defiant stance against the LIV bully boys.
But the one place McIlroy has never won is a place in Irish hearts. That will-he-won’t-he debate about which country he’d golf for in the Olympics did not do him any favours. Nor does his aloofness which differs radically from Lowry’s everyman status.
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Whereas the Offaly-man is a patron of Offaly GAA, McIlroy supports Ulster Rugby. One buys a round in the Boar’s Head; the other played a round with Donald Trump.
And the difference has seeped into our conscience. This year Rory McIlroy won four tournaments, Lowry one, Maguire none.
Not just that. Lowry’s best performance in a major this year was sixth, Maguire’s a tie for 24th.
Yet the bottom line is, if they had the year McIlroy had, it would have been declared a great one. Quite possibly they would have won Sports Person of the Year. At the very least they would have been nominated.
But with McIlroy we kind of expect a four-tournament winning year from him.
And for many, 2024 won't be defined by what he won - more by what he lost.
That essentially is Rory’s problem, in that is he is constantly being compared to Rory McIlroy, the golfer who won four Majors by his 25th birthday.
Will there ever be a fifth?
It should have happened this year at the US Open when McIlroy had the lead on 8-under with four holes left to play. He choked. Bryson DeChambeau won it ... with a score of 6-under.
We wonder if those psychological scars will ever heal as the final hole birdie at the DP World Tour Championship a few weeks back highlighted how emotional McIlroy can get.
Like Pinehurst, McIlroy had a final round lead at the DP World. Like Pinehurst, he felt the pressure, dropping two shots between the seventh and the 14th, missing a couple of easy putts to boot, before a birdie on 16 sealed the deal.
This was his sixth Race to Dubai Championship, a tally he now shares with Seve Ballesteros - his hero.
Sure enough, Seve's name cropped up in interviews after that final hole. Just the sheer mention of it triggered an emotional charge in Rory.
“Everyone knows what Seve means to European golf and to Ryder Cup players,” a choked-up McIlroy said after that win.
“In the European Ryder Cup locker room, all we have are quotes of Seve.
“We had a changing room with Seve’s shirt from ’95, the last Ryder Cup he played. He means so much to European golf and for me to be mentioned in the same breath, I’m very proud.”
He has every right to be.
Remember only five Europeans have won more Major titles than McIlroy, only one of whom is still alive.
Remember too that McIlroy’s wins are complemented by an extraordinary set of strong finishes: 18 top five placings in Majors, 31 top tens. For comparison, Lowry has four top five finishes, nine top ten postings. Maguire’s best finish in a major is sixth.
That’s good.
But McIlroy is great.
Still is he appreciated for being great?
This is what he said after the DP World: “What I’ve learned is it doesn’t have to be important for everyone else.
“I think what I did today (winning the DP World) is very meaningful for me personally.
"I would think from an outside perspective, it mightn’t be that meaningful if people are just looking from the outside, in terms of other things that I’ve achieved in the game and things that I didn’t achieve this year.
"But just because it maybe isn’t as important to them doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be as important to me.”
What matters is that this sportsman should be important to us - because we have never had a golfer like him.
For context, only 15 players in golf history have won more Majors than the Ulsterman. But 89 players have won more Majors than Lowry.
This year he finished third in the world, won four times, was runner up three times, finished third twice, and had a total of 13 top ten finishes.
That’s superb. Now let's be fair too. Lowry also had a very good year but not on this scale. Yet the perception remains that Lowry is overachieving, McIlroy underachieving.
And this awareness of how the public perceives him is hurting McIlroy.
He said: “Look, yeah, I know how people are going to view my year and I view my year similarly.
“But at the same time, I still have to remember I won four times and I won a second Race to Dubai. I accumulated a lot of big finishes and big performances, and the two guys that had better years than me have had career years.
“Xander won two majors, and Scottie has won a Players and a Masters and an Olympic Gold Medal. They are the only two guys this year that I think that have had better years than me.”
It’s time we opened our eyes to this reality. We have the third best golfer in the world in our midst - a national treasure we have here. It is time we learned to appreciate him.
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