Sky Sports Golf anchor Nick Dougherty called it perfectly after Rory McIlroy missed the putt on the 72nd hole to force himself into a play off. “Unbearable and unmissable,” said the Sky man, and doesn’t that just sum up the experience of watching Rory on TV over the last 11 years?
Sir Nick Faldo, also on Sky, said that McIlroy had delivered “the most riveting and agonising golf and emotions we have all ever been through – and for that I want to give him a smack round the face and a big kiss.” Not all of us would necessarily go that far but it certainly speaks to the strong feelings that McIlroy generates in both devotees and haters alike.
Sky’s Masters coverage was the most anticipated sports broadcast of the year so far because McIlroy versus Bryson DeChambeau was a proper duel between two chalk-and-cheese characters who do not appear to like each other very much. In the end, that showdown didn’t really happen, but maybe that made it even more watchable because the drama became truly zoomed in on one man. Rory that is, not Sir Nick Faldo, despite the latter’s best efforts to make the story about him.
Rory had said beforehand that he was determined not to make it a rematch of the US Open last year, that he wanted “to surround myself in my own little cocoon, get in my own little bubble”. DeChambeau’s stated game plan, paraphrased in summary: “USA! USA! USA!”
I suspect I am not alone among British and Irish golf fans in finding DeChambeau a difficult chap to warm to: taking the Saudi shilling; the love-in with President Trump; refusing to get a Covid vaccine; and a personal YouTube channel which is the viewing equivalent of watching a frat boy crush beer cans on his head non-stop for hours while everybody shouts “bro!” at each other. That silly skull and crossbones baseball cap. Perhaps it would not be so bad if Bryson DeChambeau had a less preposterous name.
McIlroy, by contrast, has been a diamond: a brilliant, sometimes frustrating talent, an ambassador for his sport and a gentleman. We have watched him grow up in public, under intense scrutiny: he is still only 35 but it feels like he has been around forever. Those clips of him as a kid, chipping balls into the washing machine on Gerry Kelly’s TV talk show, already the under-10 world golf champion, showing a mixture of genius and the love of the game and maybe intimations too of the pressure and perfectionism. To see his outpouring of emotion on Sunday night felt like the culmination of an epic voyage not just for him but for those of us who have watched him on telly every step, and mis-step, of the way.
He had a hugely relatable backstory about his mum and dad working factory night shifts, three jobs, sacrificing everything to give their only child his start, brilliantly sold in that superb Nike TV advert alongside Tiger Woods. He puts me in mind of Wayne Rooney and Sir Andy Murray in that he has simultaneously achieved an enormous amount but critics had nevertheless felt the right to damn him with faint praise or claim that he should have won more. Sunday night has surely put an end to that, although you never know.
He said before play on Sunday that he had relaxed by “watching Carlos Alcaraz win in Monte Carlo and a bit of soccer, keeping myself distracted with other sports”. He strikes me as someone who thinks about the world and his place in it and this sets him apart in a sport where most of the top guys are by nature self-absorbed, bordering on the sociopathic.
He had even had his nose in a book last week, The Reckoning by John Grisham; DeChambeau would surely consider reading a suspect and deeply un-American activity. In the end, of course, it was not a fight to the death with Bryson but a respectful, classy play-off with Justin Rose, another fine sportsman.
That seemed fitting because McIlroy’s story has always been about more than just the results. He became the de facto front man and voice of reason for his sport in the face of the Saudi LIV debacle. When he changed his view about it, he was big enough to say that perhaps he had been wrong, telling Gary Neville’s Stick to Football podcast: “I was maybe a little judgmental of the guys who went to LIV Golf at the start, and I think it was a bit of a mistake on my part because I now realise that not everyone is in my position.”
He wrestled with unenviable decisions about whether to compete for Team GB or Ireland at the Olympics. He handled questions about Irish/British identity with grace and thoughtfulness, ruefully accepting that there could be no solution that did not upset at least some people.
But he is neither saintly nor bloodless: getting involved in a Ryder Cup car park bust-up after Joe LaCava, the caddie for Patrick Cantlay, over-celebrated the American’s long birdie putt. That was a little piece of TV gold. He got into it with Patrick Reed in Dubai after, McIlroy said, he was “subpoenaed by [Reed’s] lawyer on Christmas Eve” in a defamation claim. Paul McGinley said on Sky Sunday night: “Rory’s not everybody’s cup of tea,” and there’s certainly some truth in that.
He has been tearful at times, crying when he matched Seve Ballesteros’s six order of merit titles, and in despair as well when his game has fallen apart, and in joy now as he got his Green Jacket. Ewen Murray said on Sunday night: “I cannot ever remember seeing a golfer this emotional.” He has been human, and flawed. Regrettably, he is a Manchester United fan. But he has never been less than a captivating watch on TV. Sunday night was the latest and greatest thrill ride he has taken us on, but surely not the last.
Sky Sports Golf anchor Nick Dougherty called it perfectly after Rory McIlroy missed the putt on the 72nd hole to force himself into a play off. “Unbearable and unmissable,” said the Sky man, and doesn’t that just sum up the experience of watching Rory on TV over the last 11 years?
Sir Nick Faldo, also on Sky, said that McIlroy had delivered “the most riveting and agonising golf and emotions we have all ever been through – and for that I want to give him a smack round the face and a big kiss.” Not all of us would necessarily go that far but it certainly speaks to the strong feelings that McIlroy generates in both devotees and haters alike.
Sky’s Masters coverage was the most anticipated sports broadcast of the year so far because McIlroy versus Bryson DeChambeau was a proper duel between two chalk-and-cheese characters who do not appear to like each other very much. In the end, that showdown didn’t really happen, but maybe that made it even more watchable because the drama became truly zoomed in on one man. Rory that is, not Sir Nick Faldo, despite the latter’s best efforts to make the story about him.
Rory had said beforehand that he was determined not to make it a rematch of the US Open last year, that he wanted “to surround myself in my own little cocoon, get in my own little bubble”. DeChambeau’s stated game plan, paraphrased in summary: “USA! USA! USA!”
I suspect I am not alone among British and Irish golf fans in finding DeChambeau a difficult chap to warm to: taking the Saudi shilling; the love-in with President Trump; refusing to get a Covid vaccine; and a personal YouTube channel which is the viewing equivalent of watching a frat boy crush beer cans on his head non-stop for hours while everybody shouts “bro!” at each other. That silly skull and crossbones baseball cap. Perhaps it would not be so bad if Bryson DeChambeau had a less preposterous name.
McIlroy, by contrast, has been a diamond: a brilliant, sometimes frustrating talent, an ambassador for his sport and a gentleman. We have watched him grow up in public, under intense scrutiny: he is still only 35 but it feels like he has been around forever. Those clips of him as a kid, chipping balls into the washing machine on Gerry Kelly’s TV talk show, already the under-10 world golf champion, showing a mixture of genius and the love of the game and maybe intimations too of the pressure and perfectionism. To see his outpouring of emotion on Sunday night felt like the culmination of an epic voyage not just for him but for those of us who have watched him on telly every step, and mis-step, of the way.
He had a hugely relatable backstory about his mum and dad working factory night shifts, three jobs, sacrificing everything to give their only child his start, brilliantly sold in that superb Nike TV advert alongside Tiger Woods. He puts me in mind of Wayne Rooney and Sir Andy Murray in that he has simultaneously achieved an enormous amount but critics had nevertheless felt the right to damn him with faint praise or claim that he should have won more. Sunday night has surely put an end to that, although you never know.
He said before play on Sunday that he had relaxed by “watching Carlos Alcaraz win in Monte Carlo and a bit of soccer, keeping myself distracted with other sports”. He strikes me as someone who thinks about the world and his place in it and this sets him apart in a sport where most of the top guys are by nature self-absorbed, bordering on the sociopathic.
He had even had his nose in a book last week, The Reckoning by John Grisham; DeChambeau would surely consider reading a suspect and deeply un-American activity. In the end, of course, it was not a fight to the death with Bryson but a respectful, classy play-off with Justin Rose, another fine sportsman.
That seemed fitting because McIlroy’s story has always been about more than just the results. He became the de facto front man and voice of reason for his sport in the face of the Saudi LIV debacle. When he changed his view about it, he was big enough to say that perhaps he had been wrong, telling Gary Neville’s Stick to Football podcast: “I was maybe a little judgmental of the guys who went to LIV Golf at the start, and I think it was a bit of a mistake on my part because I now realise that not everyone is in my position.”
He wrestled with unenviable decisions about whether to compete for Team GB or Ireland at the Olympics. He handled questions about Irish/British identity with grace and thoughtfulness, ruefully accepting that there could be no solution that did not upset at least some people.
But he is neither saintly nor bloodless: getting involved in a Ryder Cup car park bust-up after Joe LaCava, the caddie for Patrick Cantlay, over-celebrated the American’s long birdie putt. That was a little piece of TV gold. He got into it with Patrick Reed in Dubai after, McIlroy said, he was “subpoenaed by [Reed’s] lawyer on Christmas Eve” in a defamation claim. Paul McGinley said on Sky Sunday night: “Rory’s not everybody’s cup of tea,” and there’s certainly some truth in that.
He has been tearful at times, crying when he matched Seve Ballesteros’s six order of merit titles, and in despair as well when his game has fallen apart, and in joy now as he got his Green Jacket. Ewen Murray said on Sunday night: “I cannot ever remember seeing a golfer this emotional.” He has been human, and flawed. Regrettably, he is a Manchester United fan. But he has never been less than a captivating watch on TV. Sunday night was the latest and greatest thrill ride he has taken us on, but surely not the last.
