TROON, Scotland — Rory McIlroy is on vacation now. Somewhere in Europe, surely. Tuscany, maybe. Portugal, perhaps. His mind got there before his body did — the thought of relaxation creeping in as he made a snowman on Royal Troon’s 4th, the 22nd hole of his Open Championship. Time to go somewhere warm.
It won’t be a long holiday. Unlike other sports, golf always offers somewhere else to play. The Olympics competition begins in 10 days. McIlroy will be there, wearing Irish green.
That’s kinda his thing, right? Resilience, to use his choice word. Or simply, moving on. No matter how many short putts he misses, no matter how many majors slip out of his grasp, McIlroy always returns. (What else is there to do?) And when he returns, he tends to win. Atlanta in August and Dubai in January and Charlotte in May. Even New Orleans in April. Everywhere except for where he wants to win most. It has to be infuriating.
It is now a clean 10 years since McIlroy lifted a major championship trophy, and by the time he gets another chance, it will have been 10 years and eight months. Surely that number will kick around his mind on vacation. How many FedEx Cups can one win without claiming a major? How many Races to Dubai? How many weeks ranked inside the top 4 before he wins one of the top four?
We’ve got five months left of 2024 but your mind goes straight to the major hosts for 2025. Augusta, Quail Hollow, Oakmont and Portrush. The first, his bugaboo. The second, his second home. The third, eh, good luck. The fourth, his real home. They’re all different tests and all topics for another day. The question everyone wants him to consider now is simple: What does he need to do differently? Here’s a fairer one: What can he do differently?
McIlroy has surrounded himself with a slew of talented, keen people, all trying to bring out his best. He has a good caddie who puts him at ease. That’s important and unquantifiable. He has the ear of Dr. Bob Rotella, a preeminent sports psychologist. He talks with Butch Harmon on occasion, arguably the best golf coach in the world. One of the best putters in PGA Tour history, Brad Faxon, tends to McIlroy’s stroke. Michael Bannon — who has groomed McIlroy’s swing since his youth — was at his side the last two weeks. Tiger Woods shares insight whenever Rory asks. Michael Jordan and Rafa Nadal text their condolences and advice. That might not be worth much when the wind is whipping 30 mph in your face, but it means something. People respect McIlroy, and desperately want him to summit the mountain.
McIlroy also has tried filling in the cracks of the foundation by reading different books before majors, applying different tactics, committing to different approaches. He tries to stay in his “cocoon” more than he used to, keeping a narrow window of focus. He’s not sitting for dinner in Pinehurst Village during the U.S. Open. He’s not signing autographs after every round, or posing for pictures pre-round. Detractors will roll their eyes, but he has improved, recording eight top 10s in the last 12 majors. That’s one of the pillars of the frustration, both his and ours. He’s always good, bordering on great, but never first. Sometimes it takes nine holes for us to realize it, sometimes 45, this week just 22. At St. Andrews, LACC and Pinehurst, it took a full 72. That’s 2022, 2023 and 2024 summed up for him. It feels a long way from 2011, 2012 and the double-major magic of 2014.
McIlroy responded to his Pinehurst collapse by walking the High Line, on Manhattan’s west side, a handful of times. He met a good pal for coffee. He called up Rotella for an hour-long chat. Then he changed his phone number, hoping to draw some space between himself and suddenly sympathetic media. That’s what Sisyphus would do if Sisyphus was real and reaching the 10-year mark. He’d reset. Turn the page. Take a lap. Then go again. McIlroy returned and beat 146 other pros at the Scottish Open, losing to just three.
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There’s an element of showing back up that helps you get over it all. The questions at the Open directly mimicked the ones he heard a week earlier, at the Scottish Open. Where is your head space? How did you process it all? How will you act differently next time? The same questions will wait for him at the Masters in the spring. But few players seem to draw an element of therapy from their visits with the press like McIlroy does. It was on Friday afternoon of the Scottish, exactly one week before that fateful snowman, where McIlroy stood with reporters and seemed to process a bit of his future in real-time.
“I think sometimes I need to take a step back and appreciate what I’ve done in my career and in my life, and enjoy my success,” he said. “I don’t really enjoy my success. I haven’t, I would say, for the last five — I haven’t been on a vacation for the last four or five years. So I think just stepping back and enjoying myself a little bit more away from my game, and my career, is a really important thing.”
A reporter asked him when he last took a vacation.
“Ohhhh.”
McIlroy took his hat off and ran his fingers through his hair.
“I mean, like proper vacation? Um…”
He paused.
“Can’t even remember. It’s been a while.”
Maybe that’s why the idea snuck into his mind after penciling an 8 onto his scorecard at the Open. This year’s major journey was over. It could be time for a trip. Golf has at times been all-consuming in his life, he told us at the Scottish. He’s had to be intentional to disconnect from it. Naturally, we asked him how he does that.
“For someone that travels so much, I like traveling,” he said. “I like seeing new places. Even like I said, going up to New York there for three days after Pinehurst — I enjoy that stuff. I enjoy eating at new restaurants, I enjoy going to vineyards, tasting new wines. I’m a bit of, you know, I guess a bit of a foodie.
“I enjoy seeing new parts of the world. I wouldn’t say I’ve got a ton of hobbies. Been talking about trying to get to the mountains in the new year, and trying to get Poppy on a set of skis — I don’t think I’ll get on a set of skis. But yeah, just trying to do new things and see new places. It’s a big world out there and I’d like to see a lot of it.”
He can’t go too far, though. His to-do list won’t let him. Paris beckons.