Dispatches from Augusta National: Invested in Rory, Part Two
After moving into a tie for the lead at The Masters with a third round 65, Cam Young looked to be poised to win his first Major. After an opening 40 on the front nine of the first round, The Players champion righted himself with a stretch of forty-five holes played in -15. A two-time winner on the PGA Tour, a Sunday Mass going, American Ryder Cup Hero, you’d think Young was going to be a crowd favorite in the final round.
He didn’t expect that.
“I don’t get the sense I’ll be the fan favorite,” he explained. But yeah, I feel like the support, some fans that cheer for me have gotten louder over the last year. It will still be lopsided, I think. Rory’s kind of a world favorite in the golf world.”
Really?
The trunk slamming, ‘I’m divorcing my wife,’ sometimes petulant and whiny Northern Irishman, a favorite in Georgia over the latest version of Captain America?
If you frame it like that, it seems impossible, but Young was right, Rory McIlroy is the dominant fan favorite that the golf world is still invested in after winning the Masters last year and completed the sport’s “Grand Slam.”
“I grew up with Rory,” one late-twenty-something golfer and Masters patron told me Sunday after McIlroy claimed his second Green Jacket.
“He’s got crazy game, and sometimes hits it off the world, like I do,” he finished with a laugh.
While this post-millennial says he grew up with Rory, perhaps it’s as true to say Rory grew up with him. It was a bit of a shock to hear McIlroy say it was his eighteenth Masters and he thought, “I’ve got probably ten more years around this.”
Wait, what?
That’s right, Rory McIlroy isn’t that jaunty-walking, goofy teenager who just kills it and crushes the field anymore. At 36-years old, McIlroy is a seasoned, experienced, full of scar tissue, six-time Major champion with a family.
And it all happened right before our eyes.
Look back at pictures of McIlroy holding the US Open trophy at Congressional. He was twenty-one! At twenty-two he had collected his first PGA Championship. Remember when his dad placed that big bet that Rory would win The Open before he was 25 — and he did it? While that seems like a completely different person and even a lifetime ago, we’re the ones who have seen it all.
Not to say that Rory is universally loved. He has his detractors and a segment of the sporting world that’s ambivalent, but his ups and downs, the missed putts and errant drives have all happened right there in public. A star, not only in golf, but on the world stage, his personal life is an open book. His engagement and last-second called off marriage to tennis player Caroline Wozniacki made headlines. His subsequent relationship with Erica Stoll was Page Six fodder. His hasty announcement that he was divorcing Stoll and quick turn-around only fueled the gossip mongers. The PGA Tour leaned on McIlroy as their “face” during the heat of the LIV Tour split.
Add all of that together, and sprinkle in his life’s story as a child prodigy, his parents sacrifice, and him fulfilling the promise his talent portended, and you get a superstar. But again, it happened right in front of us.
Rory’s always been available and relatable. Golf as a sport grew on the shoulders of Tiger Woods. But Woods has always tried to be intensely private., Although unsuccessful, Tiger wanted everything hidden. He was curt, sullen, easy to respect but also easy not to like.
Rory, on the other hand, has been right there. Accessible and polite. You get the feeling that if you said, “Hey Rors, how about a pint?” He’d probably say yes and come along just to hang out.
There have been multiple comparisons to Arnold Palmer and the charisma he brought to the game. And there are similarities. Arnold was magnetic, you wanted to go with him. Rory’s similar but in a way that you want him to come with you. If Arnold was the movie star you just wanted to be near who might date your sister, Rory’s the guy you wanted to come along who might end up marrying your sister.
We’re invested in Rory, and that’s not going to change. Prodigious talent that grew up next door. We know him and we like him.
“t took me 10 years to win my fifth major,” McIlroy said Sunday night. “And then my sixth one’s come pretty soon after it. I don’t want to put a number on it, but I certainly don’t want to stop here.”
We hope not.
