When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
So Pinckney waited for McIlroy to register on Monday. And waited. And waited. He said he kept going to the registration desk, asking, “Has Rory registered yet?”
Soon after, they met by chance on a clubhouse elevator. The scene smacked of something out of a sappy movie.
That night, they went to dinner, with Pinckney’s father joining. The next morning, they went to a shopping mall together, just the two of them. They had coffee there. They shopped. Pinckney said he bought some underwear briefs. McIlroy, who looks like he doesn’t need to shave, bought shaving cream.
“He hasn’t changed,” Pinckney said. “He’s completely down to earth. It was like nothing had changed, like we were best of friends.”
Obvious question of the day: can Rory hang on this time?
We can't possibly know how much pressure the 22-year-old is feeling, but looking at Congressional's architecture and setup this week, the early speed horse has an advantage over the late chargers even if the Championship Committee follows through with their expected late-charge-friendly Sunday setup. (Something I explain more about in this Golf World Daily prognostication.)
In other words, the combination of soft greens and the Rees Jones pre-vent design makes this course much easier to hold a lead on than Augusta National.
Rory McIlroy's opening 6-under 65 stole the show at a Congressional vulnerable to a low round in the morning and less so by the afternoon when greens got bumpy and the wind gusted, meaning his afternoon round was all that much more impressive.
Maybe it is all of that and the fact that in this age of self-entitled, overpaid underachievers in sports he holds out the promise of being the real deal with the added value of being a nice guy in the process. Here is a young man who may not only live up to the hype, but also not allow his genuine goodness to be altered by his success.
Steve Elling writes that Rees Jones wasn't surprised his patient was vulnerable.
Noted golf architect Rees Jones had been hanging around the 111th U.S. Open premises all day, and like many others, he figured that somebody was sure to light up the scoreboard at Congressional Country Club.
The conditions were right, the world's best players were on the grounds and the greens were running slower than traffic on the traffic-choked Beltline, compared to the Open's baked-out norm. Hours passed.
History has shown that when mega-low scores crop at major championships, it's frequently in the first round, before the pressure builds. Jones assumed somebody would make a wicked run at Congressional, maybe even threaten the Grand Slam scoring record of 63. Then absolutely nothing happened.
Late in the afternoon, Jones, who redesigned Congressional in advance of the Open, looked up as Ulsterman Rory McIlroy was making yet another birdie.
"All day we've been waiting, and now it looks like he might do it," Jones said.
Bob Harig looks at Rory's recent run at the last four majors.
He shot a major championship record-tying 63 at St. Andrews last summer to hold the first-round lead in the British Open, only to be undone by a gale-induced 80 in the second round. He still finished third.
At the PGA Championship, he was tied for the lead on the back nine and had a 15-footer for birdie on the 72nd hole that would have put him in a playoff. He tied for third.
The Masters, of course, became legendary for his Sunday meltdown. Tied for the lead on the 10th tee, he shot 43 on the way to an 80 and finished 10 strokes behind winner Charl Schwartzel.
And here he is again, contending at his fourth straight major.
Robert Lusetich explains how Rory is feeding off supportive comments received from Jack Nicklaus.
“It’s a nice pressure to have knowing that the greatest player ever at the minute thinks that you’re going to do pretty good.”
McIlroy will do well to heed Jack’s advice.
“He emphasized so much to me about not making mistakes. That was his big thing.
“He said people lost a lot more majors and gave them to him than he actually won. It was a good piece of advice to have.”
I'm a little behind in my reading so I just got to Barry Svrluga's profile of Rory McIlroy, with a focus on his recent visit to Haiti. I don't care if he is tied to UNICEF; how many of today's Hogan's and Sneads would do what Rory did?Steve Elling on Rory McIlroy's impressive pre-U.S. Open schedule that includes a trip to Haiti next week.
"You want to associate yourself with a charity that you feel close to, and UNICEF works mainly as a children's charity, and I feel like I'm the sort of age that I can relate to the younger people," he said. "I just don't want to really put my name to it, I wanted to do something, and they were very keen for me to go and see somewhere where they're hands on and they're working, and it sort of just fit in quite well that I could go to Haiti for a couple of days and see what they do."
Robert Jones on Rory McIlroy's refreshingly candid comments about the Masters during his Wells Fargo Championship press conference.
“First thing I don't think I was ready — that was the most important thing,” the young Ulsterman said at Quail Hollow, the course where he shot a magical 62 to win his first PGA Tour title a year ago.
“I displayed a few weaknesses in my game that I need to work on.
“But I think you've got to take the positives — for 63 holes I led and it was just a very bad back nine that sort of took the tournament away from me, I suppose.
“But what can you do? There are three more majors this year and hopefully dozens more that I'll play in my career.
“I was just trying to stay ahead of the field, which in hindsight probably wasn't a good thing.
It was fascinating to see how many people who aren't Tweeters emailing around the image that Rory McIlroy posted on his Twitter account featuring himself with Charl Schwartzel headed to Malaysia. Not only did it remind people what a graceful and even courageous young man he is in defeat, but only added to his following as Jay Busbee noted.That's the perspective Brian Keogh delivers and which I was unable to put into words on the earlier post about Rory's SI piece jabbing at Tiger, who is on the receiving end of criticism from the golf community like never before.
In this sense, McIlroy has been like the child from the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Emperor’s New Clothes . Where others fear to voice what is obvious, McIlroy does not mince his words or hide the fact the man who was once a role model has now been laid bare as a tarnished anti-hero with a balky golf swing.
Frank Deford likens Tiger and interest in watching him play to the Broadway disaster that is Spider-Man.
You know what he reminds me of? The Broadway musical Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark. It sells out to the curious, even though the critics hate it and it's always a tease, always a work in progress. And there's a dark side that draws us in. Maybe Spidey will find itself. But maybe it'll only be always not quite there.
We watch Tiger Woods with the same almost morbid fascination, afraid to look away because if we do, we'll miss it if he miraculously returns to greatness, as if age doesn't matter with majesty, and what changed his life was all just a bump in the road.
Post Rory's refreshingly honest comments and suggest they weren't the wisest words to write and boy do the defenders come out of the woodwork!
Okay, we're not in Stephen Ames territory quite yet, but you do have to wonder what Rory McIlroy thinks there is to gain from these comments about Tiger in a self-bylined golf.com item that appears in this week's SI Golf Plus special issue.
I wasn't playing against Tiger Woods when he had that aura. I was watching on TV! I remember getting nervous when I first met him. I was 15. There was a presence about him. There still is to some extent, but when you're on the golf course you simply block it out. But Tiger is not playing as well as he was even a couple of years ago, never mind going back to the late 1990s and early 2000s, when he was at his best. I'm not sure we are going to see him dominate again the way he did. He never seemed like he would make a mistake.
Okay, that was edgy but at least that's the...oh there's more.
It's not that he's playing badly. He's simply playing badly by Tiger's standards. He's playing like an ordinary golfer. People expect more of him because of what he has achieved. As much as I would love to have the success that Tiger has had on the golf course, I wouldn't want to live his life. He has made the same mistakes as any footballer, or NBA or NFL player. Tiger is obviously different from the rest of us because he is a bit of a rock star. But he can't really take his kids to the cinema. It's a tough life because of what he has done and what he represents, being the first African-American golfer to break down the barriers.
Why didn't Rory's ten-percenter, Chubby Chandler, turn into Ben Bradlee on this one? Or do they just not ever anticipate having to face Tiger in contention anymore and enjoy beating the lad while he's down?
Or...maybe this was just a ploy to bury the real lede: Rory writing that The Players has lost its luster moving to May!
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
