TV VIEW:THUNDER, LIGHTNING, landslides, floods. Summer in Scotland. A bit like our own, really. "Oooh, the clouds are still angry," Peter Alliss warned the viewers when coverage of the Scottish Open got under way yesterday, and true enough, they had a "we're not finished with ye yet" look about them.
Play was, though, able to go ahead and after the camera picked out a bunker that resembled an Olympic-sized swimming pool, it moved on to Matt Kuchar. As a native of Florida, he’s isn’t exactly a stranger to extreme weather, but still, his face wondered: “What’s winter like in Inverness?”
Earlier, Lee Westwood had been asked by the BBC to describe just how frustrating all the delays had been, but, shaking his head, he could hardly find the words.
If Rory McIlroy was watching all of this on telly back home, he might have been entitled to chuckle a little at those who’d suggested he’d been unwise to skip the tournament, that it would have been a useful warm-up for the British Open.
The truth is, based on the evidence of BBC Northern Ireland’s documentary on McIlroy earlier in the week, what the fella seemed to need more than anything was a dozen good nights’ sleep.
“I’m absolutely knackered,” he confessed the day after winning the US Open, as he left his hotel for a 9:10am flight (on a private jet) to Cape Cod, where he had to play a round for one of his sponsors – having still been up at five that morning to take Darren Clarke’s congratulatory phone call. These lads just don’t ‘do’ time zones.
Things didn’t get much quieter after that, the documentary sprinkled with clips of McIlroy desperately trying to squeeze some sleep into a schedule that erupted after he’d conquered the Congressional.
If he didn’t realise life would change utterly the moment he sank that last putt, he’d have had a fair idea when he found himself leaving the scene of his triumph in a police escort, with a fan screaming “I LOVE YOU RORY!” in the window of his car.
And as he strolled through the airport in Boston, heading for his flight to Heathrow, his every step was monitored by smiling strangers.
Back home, he told his girlfriend Holly Sweeney, in an endearingly incredulous kind of way, about his arrival in Belfast.
“There were paparazzi at the airport – proper paparazzi,” he said. Only his dogs seemed chilled about it all, showing no interest in the US Open trophy in his arms when he arrived at the house, just leaping on their master and giving him a slobbery welcome home after he’d been off doing whatever it is humans do when they go missing.
There’s a ‘be careful what you wish for’ madness to it all, the rewards for winning a Major positively immense, but, you’d imagine, the only peace he’ll get from here on in is when he’s actually out on the course playing golf.
Sweeney, meanwhile, is being dubbed a “busty cheerleader” by one British newspaper, her and McIlroy’s private life now a source of tremendous interest.
We’ll trust that their phones aren’t being hacked.
Life, then, will never be the same. “I think he has the kind of talent and likeability to make him a real icon,” said Golf World magazine’s Jaime Diaz in the documentary. While probably true, that class of talk can’t be a good thing for a 22-year-old who’s just won his first Major.
“Don’t anoint him as the crown prince yet,” as Jack Nicklaus put it at the weekend.
“When he starts to win two, three or four, then you can say he’s the guy we’ve got to watch, period. But until that time comes, he’s one of a group of talented players that have got an opportunity to win.”
As for the Tiger comparisons. “We’re ready for a champion who doesn’t act like the whole world’s his spittoon, who has a touch of decency,” Golf Digest’s Tom Callahan told the BBC.
You know, if you’d a dollar for every time a golf commentator used McIlroy’s US Open success as an opportunity to indulge in a spot of Woods-bashing, rather than just to celebrate McIlroy’s brilliance, your bank balance would be mightily healthy. Maybe not of Woods’ proportions, but healthy.
Granted, McIlroy’s manners are a touch more impressive, but as he had the good grace to say in his chat with CNN’s Piers Morgan last week, if he even comes close to achieving in golf what Woods has achieved, he’ll be doing well.
