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Rory McIlroy has won three times this season, including his first green jacket in April, but has sputtered in the months since his breakthrough at Augusta National. He went on to miss the cut and bristle at media coverage of his failed driver test at the PGA Championship. Then at the U.S. Open at Oakmont, McIlroy acknowledged he was still annoyed and didn’t want to be there.
“I have felt a little flat on the golf course afterwards,’’ McIlroy said.
The whole thing is hard to reconcile: A golfer achieving the biggest win of his career, and then appearing adrift not long after. If history is any indication, there is a precedent. While McIlroy’s win at Augusta in April was the fifth major title of his career, David Duval’s win in the 2001 Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St. Annes was his first. But the two were similar in that they were preceded by years of anticipation. Rory needed 11 years to complete the career Grand Slam, and Duval was looking to validate a stretch of golf good enough to briefly supplant Tiger Woods as the No. 1 player in the world. In 1999, Duval shot 59 and won the Players, but it wasn’t until two years later that he captured his first major, shooting 65-67 on the weekend to win by three.
The curious part is what happened next. As with McIlroy’s Masters win, Duval’s Open title suggested he would be relieved of high expectations and prepared to advance to a higher level as a result. But that’s not what happened. The Open was Duval’s 13th win on tour, but he never won again, and would eventually plummet down the World Ranking. Some of this was a function of the accumulation of injuries, but as Duval has also acknowledged, the realisation of a goal cut into his motivation as well.
“I think I figured it would mean personal validation as opposed to professional validation,” Duval told Golf Digest’s Bob Verdi in an interview in 2006. “It was not the end-all, be-all that I made it out to be in my head. And things might have been different had I really felt I was playing well there in 2001. Of all the tournaments I’ve won, I dare say that’s the least comfortable I’ve ever felt with my game and my ability to control the ball.”
Another similarity between Duval and McIlroy was how their relationship with the media grew more precarious. Both golfers had been cited as thoughtful, independent thinkers, and yet both have expressed frustration that their candor has occasionally burned them. In his Saturday press conference at Oakmont, McIlroy admitted he was annoyed by some of the coverage he’s received this year.
“I don’t know. I have been totally available for the last few years, and I’m not saying, maybe not you guys, but maybe more just the whole thing,” Rory said. “I feel like I’ve earned the right to do whatever I want to do.’’
Harry How
Duval, too, said his relationship with the media soured with time, and he resented being consulted on issues just because of how well he was playing.
“I woke up one morning, and the computer said I was No. 1. All of a sudden, I was supposed to have all the answers,” he said. “But I didn’t have any different answers than when I wasn’t No. 1. Everybody came to me with questions, and I’m the type of person who really wants to give an answer.”
Duval wasn’t the same player after his major title, although he did pop up on leader boards on occasion, most notably when he contended at the 2009 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black. There’s nothing that says Rory is headed in the same direction. But if the hope was a breakthrough win would be a springboard to bigger things, there’s no guarantee of that, either.
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