With memories of his Royal Portrush meltdown six years ago still vivid, Rory McIlroy has a score to settle at the only venue in his home country to host a major title.
After becoming just the sixth man in history to win all four majors with that emotional victory at the Masters, the question switched to what could motivate Rory McIlroy in quite the same way again.
Fortunately for him, The Open in Northern Ireland was a matter of months away. With memories of his Royal Portrush meltdown six years ago still vivid, McIlroy has a score to settle at the only venue in his home country to host a major title.
And, as record crowds gather on the Antrim coast, the 36-year-old has found his next mountain to climb.
“I climbed my Everest in April, and I think after you do something like that, you’ve got to make your way back down, and you’ve got to look for another mountain to climb,” he said. “An Open at Portrush is certainly one of those. If I can’t get motivated to get up for an Open Championship at home, then I don’t know what can motivate me.”
If McIlroy can re-discover his drive and become Open champion for a second time this summer it might just match that Masters victory – as unimaginable as it may seem for anyone who watched the captivating drama unfold. That final day in April was sport at its best, too tense to watch but too important to miss, and was the kind of night that made a Sky Sports subscription feel good value for money.
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McIlroy might have won 43 professional events before Augusta, but nerves get to the best of us. He held a five-shot lead at the turn on Sunday but started to drop shots quickly. He managed to pockmark his back nine with enough moments of genius to counteract them but Justin Rose went on a charge. He birdied six of the final nine holes, including the 18th, to set the clubhouse target.
McIlroy just needed a par up the last to win and looked set to do it when he left his last putt just a few feet from the hole. But he fluffed his lines and the putt went by, sending him and Rose to a play-off. Remarkably, the pair replayed the 18th, and McIlroy won.
“I’d say it was 14 years in the making, from going out with the four-shot lead in 2011 – feeling like I could have got it done there,” he said afterwards – referencing his infamous collapse 14 years ago. There was a lot of pent-up emotion that just came out on the 18th green. But a moment like that makes all of the years and close calls worth it.”
Through his career, McIlroy has packaged a ferocious work-ethic with that God-given talent and the combination has resulted in a player who is almost unstoppable at his best. But he does carry scars and, while Royal Portrush does not hold as many ghosts as Augusta did for McIlroy, he certainly has a score to settle.
Born just 60 miles from the town, he is arguably Northern Ireland’s most famous athlete and with that comes the burden of expectation and hope. McIlroy will not just be playing for himself this year, but the majority of the 270,000 ticket holders piling through the gates. He has been a national icon for decades and first burst onto the scene as a 16-year-old when he set a new course record at – yep, you guessed it – Royal Portrush.
“I was driving home from work and the golf club phoned me but I thought it was a joke. I did not think anyone could shoot a 61,” said Michael Bannon – his first coach and mentor. It lit up the golfing world.”
The Dunluce Course has undergone several changes, with the old 17th and 18th holes removed and two new ones built into the middle. Yet it looks and feels largely the same, which was partly why it was so disconcerting to see McIlroy play there in 2019, as Portrush hosted The Open for the first time in 68 years.
By the time he reached the second tee on the first day, he had already hit a ball out of bounds, cracked Anna from Bangor’s mobile phone screen with his wayward opening tee-shot, hooked an approach shot into a bush before taking a penalty drop, and holed out for a quadruple-bogey eight.
In other words, his challenge ended almost as soon as it began and, on a week where the significance of an international event being held in Northern Ireland was perhaps greater than the actual golf, the sight of the local superstar fluffing his lines so publicly was awkward to watch.
McIlroy has had some dark days on a golf course since. He threw away the 2024 US Open in such a gut-wrenching manner that it was legitimate to question whether he would ever win a major again, while he was caught sobbing outside the scorers’ office after having The 150th Open ripped from his grasp at St Andrews.
All things considered, it’s still hard to imagine that felt worse than what transpired at Portrush. McIlroy actually stabilised his round but ended up collapsing at the end, while a second-round 65 could not undo the damage of that first-day 79 and he was on the way back to Florida before many had even finished work for the weekend.
“I didn’t realise how emotional I was going to be in 2019,” he said on the eve of this year’s event. “I think that was a thing I was unprepared for more than anything else. I remember I hit a shot into the 12th or 13th on the Friday night, when I was trying to make the cut.
“I remember the roar when the ball hit the green, and I felt like I was about to burst into tears. Just that support and that love from your own people. I was unprepared for that.
“I need to just get myself in the right frame of mind to feel those feelings again. It will be my first time back home in public after winning the Masters. Hopefully, I can celebrate with them on Sunday night with the Claret Jug and the Green Jacket.”
It will be easier said than done because, since Augusta, McIlroy has lost his spark. He admits he has not properly decompressed from winning the Masters, understandable given how hard he chased it and the circumstances in which he finally did it.
At the US PGA Championship, McIlroy struggled amid revelations his driver was “non-conforming” – not unusual in golf due to wear and tear – while at the US Open, he finished a respectable tied-19th but benefited from calm early Sunday weather before the afternoon starters felt the full force of a storm.
To help prep for Portrush, he has since taken the best part of a month off to mentally re-set. I probably haven’t taken enough time off or time to reflect after what happened in April, so I’m excited to do a little bit of that over these next two weeks,” he said.
The hope is that he will return hungry, motivated, relaxed and ready to go again. If he does, this story could get even better.