Everyone has body language expressions. Rory McIlroy has a distinctive slump. His shoulders sag and his head tilts to one side, as if its weight can’t be supported. In the final round at Quail Hollow he dashed his driver into the turf a couple of times, but nothing that could be classified as a tantrum. Resignation trumped every other feeling.
This wasn’t the Sunday McIlroy imagined: sent out with the also-rans, four and half hours ahead of the final group, 13 shots behind the number one player in the world, colouring in some dead time in the cable TV coverage. He was back in the scorer’s hut signing for a one over par 72 before any player that counted had played a shot.
What did he think happened? For the fourth day in a row, McIlroy refused to answer questions after his round.
At the beginning of the week, it was easy to read his mind: he expected to win. There is no other venue in the United States where he has experienced so much success. There was no good reason for him to fail. Or none that anybody was prepared to entertain.
After Augusta, he spoke about being unburdened and about playing with freedom. Xander Schauffele said how “scary” that prospect was for everybody else. But could it really be that simple?
Only 16 players in the history of golf have won back-to-back Majors in the same season. Jordan Spieth, Tiger Woods, Pádraig Harrington and McIlroy are the only ones to have done it in this century. When McIlroy did it in 2014, though, it didn’t involve the same expense of emotion. Not enough bad stuff had happened yet.
The Majors used to be spread out between the middle of April and the middle of August, but now they come once a month in the heat of the season. McIlroy had four weeks to recover from the greatest achievement of his life and an earthquake of feelings. Everyone just assumed that a month would be enough time.
“Even for Rory, the high that he got – you have to have some comedown,” said Harrington on Thursday. “The high that he was on was incredible.” Harrington played with him in practice for two days and said, “he looked great,” but not even McIlroy knew how he would feel until the battle started.
For the first two days he was paired with Scottie Scheffler and Schauffle, the top three players in the world rankings, and he played with Schauffle again on Saturday. He has struggled with injury since the beginning of the year and hasn’t been a factor in any event, but the dynamic between Scheffler and McIlroy is fascinating.
At the beginning of the season McIlroy spoke about trying to emulate some of Scheffler’s strengths: minimise his mistakes, be more accepting of pars. Then he won at Pebble Beach and Sawgrass and Augusta, setting a scorching pace, when Scheffler’s season hadn’t got off the ground yet.
As the defending champion at Augusta, Scheffler had the ceremonial duty of draping the green jacket around McIlroy’s shoulders. He did so with a smile on his face and said afterwards how pleased he was for his “friend,” but a part of him must have been riled up.
In his pre-tournament press conference at Quail Hollow Scheffler was asked if he had been “inspired” by McIlroy’s early season form and he immediately said that he had been asked the same question when he won the Byron Nelson two weeks earlier. The clear implication was that he wasn’t going to continue addressing that question.
“I think any time somebody has beaten any of us out here, I think we’re all – I guess you could say inspired, but I think we’re all fired up to come out here and compete,” said Scheffler at the Byron Nelson. “This week I was the best player. I have the week off, and we’ll see the week after who is the best player at the PGA.”
That is the kind of question Scheffler is comfortable with.
The game needs a rivalry like this. Since the first time they were both in the same Major field, nine years ago, they have played 78 rounds in those tournaments. The difference in scoring average is less than half a shot in Scheffler’s favour. In terms of their scoring average in the final round of Majors, there is still only half a shot between them; still in Scheffler’s favour. Both of them are in the top four of all-time in that statistical category. Astonishing.
This week McIlroy didn’t bring any part of his game to Quail Hollow. He missed 30 fairways out of 56 for the week and was dead last in that statistic with a full field over the first two days; at the weekend, he was in the bottom few. Without driving, his game has no arms or legs.
One of the destructive spin-offs was that he hit just 52 per cent of greens in regulation. On the 16th on Sunday, he nearly put his ball into a hospitality tent, and he nearly put it in the water on the 7th and 17th. On the drivable 14th, though, he couldn’t avoid the lake.
When the group had moved on, one of the marshals reached down from the grassy bank and rescued the ball from the water as a keepsake. From McIlroy’s ball, somebody had salvaged something.
