Has Rory McIlroy Become A Bad Pressure Player?
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Rory McIlroy is by all accounts a high-high-level player. Four majors. 14 PGA Tour wins. FedEx Cup champ. Ryder Cup stud. Hits the ball stupendous distances. Yet, he’s also at a strange career stage due to his recent string of mediocre play when in a Sunday final pairing. As recently as last Sunday, Rory found himself in the final group only three-shots from the lead. It should be a perfect scenario not sleeping with the lead and creeping up on leader and playing partner Gary Woodland.
However, he shot a pedestrian 72 (the worst score of the top-20 players in a 33-man field) and fell to fourth. According to Shane Ryan, it was 7th straight time McIlroy was in the final group in the past year without winning the event. Of course, that leads to rampant whispers that the Irishman is a “choker.” But is he?
In general, his performances last year were shocking in their deficiency. The most you could say about him was that he made himself into an ideal final-round enemy, particularly for the extended list of Americans—Woods, Reed, Thomas, Schauffele, Bradley—who faced the former World No. 1 and came out on top.
It’s no secret that Rory McIlroy is a media darling. Along with his robust game, he’s intelligent, more open than most and funny. He’s my favorite professional golfer, although I’m not sure if that’s the sort of thing I’m supposed to admit. Everything is more exciting when Rory’s involved, and win or lose, he’s one of the more interesting personalities in the sport. Maybe that’s why his recent struggles seem to have been spun by secret consensus into a broader, kinder narrative about mundane flaws within his game that are simply one revelation away from resolving, rather than the crueler but perhaps truer narrative: That he’s put himself in contention plenty of times, just like in the glory days of 2014, but that he no longer possesses the steel to close. It’s not the skill that has faltered, perhaps, but the nerve.
But it may be time to consider that even if Rory McIlroy isn’t a choker—far from it, in the big picture—he has perhaps entered a choke-y stage of his career. The question then becomes why? Has he simply lost his nerve over time? Is there some flaw in his game that emerges under pressure? Are certain people allotted a finite amount of that cliched quality we call “killer instinct,” and when it runs out it’s gone for good? Is he just an inconstant person who cycles through phases, in which case we can expect him to come out the other side any moment now?
He’s still only 29 and has many years to right the Sunday wrongs. However, better sooner than later as those demons tend to take root unless exorcized quickly.
