Rory McIlroy chuckled uncomfortably when the subject of his heir apparency popped up three years ago at Congressional and he visibly flinched on Tuesday when it gained momentum again ahead of this week’s PGA Championship.
Rory McIlroy: Don’t anoint me the ‘next Tiger Woods’ just yet
We may be witnessing the Dawning of the Age of Rory but McIlroy does his best to avoid buying into the hype.
The three-time major winner may be on a serious roll and seeking not only his fourth grand slam title, second of the season and second in a row, but his third straight victory on the PGA Tour. With such consistently dominant performances, the likes of which the golf world has not witnessed since a certain missing-yet-ever-present 14-time major titleholder was in his prime, comparisons to Tiger Woods are inevitable.
PGA Championship
Indeed, one Woods critic who witnessed McIlroy’s wire-to-wire win at the British Open two weeks ago as Woods, recently returned from the DL after back surgery, struggled to finish 69th, was ready to proclaim the dawning of a new day in golf.
“There was a beginning of his career, a middle of his career; this is the end of his career, no question about it,” Brandel Chamblee said after Woods carded a 1-over 73 in the third round of the Open Championship and on top of Friday’s 77. “And if you want to qualify ‘era’ as dominance, then the Tiger era is over, and we’ll never see it again.”
McIlroy, the odds-on favorite to hoist the Wanamaker Trophy on Sunday, has heard it all before but would prefer that the star-maker machinery grind a tad slower.
“I don’t really know how to answer that,” the world No. 1 told reporters wanting to know if the Tiger Era had, indeed, given way to the Reign of Rory, as Padraig Harrington enthusiastically predicted it had as McIlroy was romping to an eight-shot rout of the field at the 2011 U.S. Open. “Yeah, of course, I’ve heard it and I’ve read it. Sometimes I feel that people are too quick to jump to conclusions and jump on the bandwagon or jump on certain things.
“I’ve had a great run of golf and I’ve played well over the past few months,” said McIlroy, who has six additional top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour this season and conceded he started the 2014 campaign observing that he could be the guy to take the baton from his Nike stablemate. “Look, I said at the start of the year that golf was looking for someone to put their hand up and sort of become one of the dominant players in the game. I felt like I had the ability to do that, and it’s just nice to be able to win a few tournaments and get back to where I feel like I should be, which is near the top of the world rankings and competing in majors and winning golf tournaments.
“So I’m not necessarily sure you can call that an era or the start of an era, but I’m just really happy with where my golf game is at the minute and I just want to try and continue that for as long as possible,” McIlroy summed up. “If you read everything that was being written, I’d turn up at the first tee on Thursday thinking I’d already won the tournament.”
Certainly, the bookmakers believe that, even if the man of the hour seeks to downplay the hype that follows just the third player -- along with Woods and Jack Nicklaus -- to win three majors before the age of 26.
Photo credit: Warren Little, Getty Images
It’s not just the major Ws, but the way he salted them away, that inform the Rory-Tiger correlation. He bludgeoned his competitors by eight strokes in each of his first two major victories. Despite a few hiccups down the stretch of the British Open, McIlroy posted a relatively pressure-free, two-shot win at Hoylake to chalk up the third leg of a career grand slam.
Should he go back-to-back-to-back this week and become the fifth player to do so on tour (joining Woods, Tom Watson, David Duval, and Vijay Singh, according to Yahoo Sports), he can look to the way he uncorks mammoth drives (ranked third on tour, with an average of 310 yards off the tee) that he said result from a Tiger-like workout regime.
“I’ve put on three kilograms [nearly seven pounds] of muscle in the last eight weeks, so that definitely helps,” he said. “I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been ... If I can hit it over 300 yards and in the fairway most of the time, I’m happy with that. That gives me plenty of opportunities to hit it close to flags and try and make birdies.”
No question about that; McIlroy leads the league in birdies and is second in scoring average.
Combine pounding the covers off his Nike RZN Black with iron play that’s absolutely mesmerizing and it’s no surprise McIlroy ranks 10th in greens in regulation. But it’s not just brute strength that has McIlroy on the cusp of stamping his imprimatur on the game. Working with Dave Stockton on his putting (37th on tour) and mental approach has paid huge dividends.
"I said at the start of the year that golf was looking for someone to put their hand up and become one of the dominant players in the game."
“People can talk about my driving or how I’m swinging the club,” McIlroy said, “but mentally, I just feel like I’m in a really good place, and I think that’s what I’m really happy about.”
With all that going for him, the strut is back in McIlroy’s gait if not in his words. Since he prefers not to toot his own horn, we’ll leave the singing of his praises to the eloquent Voice of the Masters, who believes the Age of McIlroy has been underway for some time.
“The transition isn’t starting now, the transition started three years ago,” CBS’ Jim Nantz said during a teleconference earlier this week. “His performance at Congressional when he won by eight shots certainly should have clued a lot of people in that there was a superstar in the making. And then the next year to go win the PGA Championship by eight shots should have been another anvil to the head for people ... that, hey, there’s maybe another era in golf that’s kicking in here.”
Nantz certainly saw a resemblance to the aging superstar whose plans for the week continue to remain a mystery.
“He [McIlroy] has his game in position right now, tee to green -- we’ve seen it before and you know who I’m talking about,” Nantz said. “Just wow, who’s going to beat this guy?”
Who, indeed?
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