It's Time to Give Rory McIlroy a Break

PERHAPS the time has come to give Rory McIlroy a break. Each and every time a major comes along we build up our expectations for the Northern Irishman, while the media reminds us all that it is 2014 since the most recent of his four major successes.

If somebody had asked you after McIlroy won The Open and the US PGA in 2014, how many majors he would have tucked under his belt by now, what would your answer have been? 10? 12? 15? 19? One thing I can absolutely guarantee is nobody would have replied: “Four.”

It is all too easy to accuse him of being an under-achiever but let’s not lose sight of the fact that McIlroy is box office. And one of the reasons we all enjoy watching him is because he is fallible, just like the rest of us. OK, so we can’t hit 350-yard drives like he does, but we can all miss greens with a wedge in our hands.

We love watching McIlroy because he is human. There are days when he can walk on water and there are days when he can’t hit a fairway, find a green or hole a putt.

The very fact that we are all still talking about his failure to add to his major tally speaks to his extraordinary talent. He has always been a streaky golfer and when he is at his best he is unbeatable.

(Image Credit: Kevin Diss Photography)

He was sensational in winning the Scottish Open. By his own admission, he was nowhere near his best at Royal Liverpool and yet he still managed to finish in a tie for sixth. In the 35 majors in which he has played since his last victory, he has had 20 top-10 finishes. By anybody’s standards, that is an extraordinary record, and one that he should be incredibly proud of. 

McIlroy’s problem is that in that time, Brooks Koepka has won five majors, Jordan Spieth has won three, Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm and Collin Morikawa have each won two. You get the picture. And the media are only too happy to keep reminding McIlroy of that.

It is fascinating that the latest talking point in golf is Scottie Scheffler’s apparently dreadful putting. Erm, Scheffler is the world’s best golfer. And he has made it clear that he is growing increasingly fed up about the speculation surrounding his work on the greens.

I would urge you to take a look at his putting stroke. There is nothing wrong with it. NOTHING. There isn’t a golfer on the planet who doesn’t go through spells when the putts don’t drop. Scheffler’s performance at The Open was the first time since October last year that he had finished worse than 12th. And you don’t achieve that level of consistency if you cannot putt. Period.

Of more concern to me was the performance of Tommy Fleetwood at Royal Liverpool. Nobody had more support than the man from Southport, not even club member Matthew Jordan.

Fleetwood began with a 66 that had us all believing that this might be the major where he finally broke through. But he could barely buy a putt over the next three days. He came to grief with a triple-bogey six at the penultimate hole - a par three that most of the field believed had no place on such an iconic golf course. He was devastated.

Fleetwood is one of the most popular players in the game, both among fans and his peers. However, even he couldn’t bring himself to talk about what happened to him on the 17th. Let’s be clear though - as unhappy as he was about that triple-bogey, his real disappointment was in not being able to kick on after making such a wonderful start. 

It may take Fleetwood a while to get over this, especially when you also consider that it comes on top of the disappointment of losing in a playoff at the Canadian Open, denying him his long-awaited and long overdue maiden win on the PGA Tour.

But we should all be thankful that we have so many incredibly gifted and talented golfers plying their trade for us just now. We are lucky to have them.