ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – Rory McIlroy had said all the right things in his post-round press conference and with those duties complete, he slumped into a four-passenger golf cart and buried his head into wife Erica’s left shoulder and all the emotions came flooding out.
The 150th Open Championship, the one McIlroy labeled his Holy Grail earlier in the week, was his to win or lose. After sharing the 54-hole lead with Viktor Hovland, McIlroy had built a two-stroke lead with nine holes to go. The World No. 2 had his strut back this week and was playing chess against the fabled seaside links in a way that would have made past champions here like Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods proud. McIlroy could almost taste the alcohol he surely would have consumed from the Claret Jug once he regained possession of the winner’s trophy for the first time since 2014 and ended his nearly eight-year winless drought. Only problem is Cameron Smith of Australia had other plans and vaulted into the lead by reeling off five back-nine birdies in a row en route to shooting 8-under 64 at the Old Course. McIlroy, who closed in 2-under 70, two shots back, and finished in third, was left to wonder what more he had to do claim his elusive fifth major title.
“I’ll be OK,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s not life or death. I’ll have other chances to win the Open Championship and other chances to win majors. It’s one that I feel like I let slip away, but there will be other opportunities.”
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Except he didn’t look OK as he drove off. He rued failing to convert on birdie chances at Nos. 3, 6 and 9, which could have nipped Smith’s charge in the bud. McIlroy hit every green in regulation in the final round and had a wonderful sense of speed with his putter, but he picked a bad time for it to go cold. He didn’t make a single putt of consequence.
“I felt like I didn’t do much wrong today, but I didn’t do much right either,” he said. “It’s just one of those days where I played a really controlled round of golf. I did what I felt like I needed to just apart from capitalizing on the easier holes – around the turn, 9, 12, 14. If I had made the birdies there from good positions, it probably would have been a different story.”
This one will hurt because McIlroy knows he had every chance to step on Smith’s neck but with every birdie by Smith his confidence grew and the pressure on McIlroy tightened.
“I can’t be too despondent because of how this year’s went and this year’s going,” he said. “I’m playing some of the best golf I’ve played in a long time. So it’s just a matter of keep knocking on the door, and eventually one will open.”
But despondent is what he looked like as he hid his face in his wife’s embrace. He finished second at the Masters, eighth at the PGA Championship, T-5 at the U.S. Open, and third at the Open – a banner-type year for Rickie Fowler in 2014 but for McIlroy it is close but no cigar. The end result is a failure and like Vesuvius he has to wait until April to begin the quest of pushing the ball up the mountain again.
It hurt because he admitted that he had dreamed of winning the 150th and allowed himself moments to look ahead and think about what it might be like to hold the trophy and be celebrated on the 18th green as the Champion Golfer of the Year.
“I’m only human. I’m not a robot. Of course, you think about it, and you envision it, and you want to envision it,” he said. “My hotel room is directly opposite the big yellow board on 18 there right of the first. And every time I go out, I’m trying to envision McIlroy at the top name on that leaderboard and how did that feel? At the start of the day, it was at the top, but at the start of tomorrow, it won’t be.”
It’s enough to make even one of the greatest golfers in the world bury his face in his wife’s warm embrace.
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