NORTH BERWICK, Scotland — We all leaned in a bit closer 12 months ago when Rory McIlroy, man of countless millions, admitted to reporters that he hadn’t taken a vacation in . . . well, a very long time.
“Like a proper vacation?” he asked. Yes — no golf clubs, no time in the simulator. Feet up and arms-behind-your-head.
“Can’t even remember,” he concluded. “It’s been a while.”
This was coming from a guy who says he loves traveling, exploring different cuisines and cultures. Early in his career he moved to Dubai, then Florida, and has now relocated once again just outside London. But for one reason or another on his concurrent journeys through golf, marriage, parenthood and life at large, vacations had escaped him.
It also was coming from a golfer who had just been broken by Bryson DeChambeau at Pinehurst. McIlroy had taken three weeks away from the Tour and was talking about the ways he likes to disconnect. He talked about needing to celebrate his victories more. Vacation had to sound good, but you could tell when he admitted to not remembering his most recent holiday, it didn’t sit well with him, so he proposed some soft targets for getting away from the game a bit more in the winter and spring.
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But if we know anything about McIlroy, it’s these two things: (1) at least half his calendar year is spent playing events on two different tours, all over the world, and, (2) he’s not afraid to change his mind. So it was always going to be interesting to see how he would describe the last 12 months of his life, and if he felt he was living up to that outspoken self-promise. The answer came during his Scottish Open press conference Wednesday.
“I missed the cut at Troon and went straight to Portugal, so that was my first holiday,” he joked.
“But then, yeah, I think over the past 12 months, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to have more fun, and I’ve really tried to do that.”
It might sound frivolous or even indefinitely vague to pursue having more fun, but McIlroy came armed with receipts. In January, it was flying with a bunch of mates to a seemingly random and quite chilly Bundesliga game in Germany between Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen. McIlroy donned the local black-and-yellow gear that night and blended into the raucous crowd, only getting noticed by a handful of spectators.
On the way home, the lads stopped over in Istanbul before heading to Dubai. A month later, after notching a couple of wins, McIlroy was at the Yellowstone Club in Montana, for a ski trip he had promised during that “proper vacation” conversation 12 months ago. His daughter, Poppy, is learning to ski. After his win at the Masters, he and caddie Harry Diamond found themselves sitting next to football legend Wayne Rooney at Manchester United’s Europa League final in Bilbao, Spain.
It’s probably difficult for outsiders to notice — particularly when McIlroy largely refrains from posting his whereabouts on social media — but these getaways emphasize a subtle shift he intends to make moving forward. All in the pursuit, it would seem, of checking off that New Year’s Resolution.
“I think there’s opportunities throughout the year that you can do these sorts of things,” McIlroy said. “I think now at this stage of life that I’m at, I’m actually trying to build my schedule around those weeks instead of the other way around, trying to sort of fit them in here or, can I take four days off?
“It’s more, no, these are going to — not take the priority — but they are going to become more important in scheduling the year, and yeah, then fit the golf tournaments around those.”
How he continues to see the world, play a global schedule and find time for time away from the clubs will never be more on display than this fall, when McIlroy ventures to India in October for the green jacket’s first visit to the budding Asian golf nation. After wrapping the DP World Tour season in Dubai in November, he’ll then head Down Under for the Australian Open at Royal Melbourne.
