-
Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior Writer
TROON, Scotland — While four-time major champion Rory McIlroy and Greg Norman have been the competing faces of a heated dispute between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf the past three years, they’re probably more alike — and intricately linked — than either would prefer to admit.
Norman won 88 times around the world and was ranked No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking for 331 weeks. He captured The Open in 1986 and 1993 but squandered plenty of other opportunities for additional major championship victories during his Hall of Fame career.
Heading into this week’s 152nd Open Championship at Royal Troon Golf Course, McIlroy has piled up 40 worldwide victories, including 26 on the PGA Tour, and has completed three of the four legs of the career Grand Slam — all but the Masters.
When McIlroy tees off Thursday on Scotland’s west coast, he’ll try to recover from one of the most painful episodes of his impressive career — and a near-miss Norman knows all too well.
More than two years ago, during a phone interview with Norman, a reporter mentioned that a recently released ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, “Shark,” had been difficult to watch.
“No s—,” Norman said. “You should have lived it.”
In April 1996, Norman suffered his most painful collapse at Augusta National Golf Club. The Australian had led each of the first three rounds and entered the final one with a 6-shot lead over England’s Nick Faldo.
Norman made the turn at 2 over, trimming his lead over Faldo to only 2 shots. Then Norman made bogeys on Nos. 9, 10 and 11 and a double bogey on 12. He posted a 6-over 78 in the final round and finished 5 shots behind Faldo in what was one of the greatest collapses in major championship history.
Norman was a three-time runner-up in the Masters and finished in the top five eight times. He never won a green jacket — and the Shark didn’t capture another major after his final-round debacle at Augusta National.
“It’s only a game,” Norman said in 2021. “It’s nothing else. It didn’t affect my health where I was suddenly incapacitated for the rest of my life. Things happen in sport. If you are going to let a negative result affect you then you aren’t a very strong person. I have never been that way, I never cried over spilt milk. You move on in life.”
That’s exactly what McIlroy is trying to do this week.
THE OPEN WILL be McIlroy’s final chance this season to end a nearly 10-year drought in major championships. He last won a major when he took home a second Wanamaker Trophy at the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky, on Aug. 10, 2014. He is 0-for-37 in majors ever since.
Last month’s U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina was McIlroy’s best chance to finally end his dry spell in the big four. In the final round, he turned a 3-shot deficit into a 2-stroke lead with five holes to play. But then McIlroy carded bogeys on three of the last four holes to lose to Bryson DeChambeau by 1.
While Norman had far more close calls in majors and was further along in his career, McIlroy’s near-miss at Pinehurst No. 2 didn’t sting any less.
At last week’s Scottish Open, where McIlroy tied for fourth at 14 under, 4 strokes behind winner Robert MacIntyre, he called the final round of the U.S. Open a “great day until it wasn’t.”
“When I look back on that day, just like I look back on some of my toughest moments in my career, I’ll learn a lot from it and I’ll hopefully put that to good use,” McIlroy said. “It’s something that’s been a bit of a theme throughout my career. I’ve been able to take those tough moments and turn them into great things not very long after that.”
Michael Jordan and Rafael Nadal were among the first people to send encouraging text messages, according to McIlroy, with Jordan reminding him of how many game-winning shots he’d missed during his NBA career. Tiger Woods waited a week to reach out to McIlroy.
“Just basically, as you know, I’m your friend,” Woods said. “I know this is a difficult moment. We’ve all been there as champions. We all lose. Unfortunately, it just happened, and the raw emotion of it, it’s still there, and it’s going to be there for, I’m sure, some time. The faster he’s able to get back on a horse and get back into contention, like he did last week, the better it is for him.”
That doesn’t mean McIlroy hasn’t been trying to dissect what happened over the final four holes.
On the par-3 15th, McIlroy hit a 7-iron on the 205-yard hole and his tee shot landed over the green, leading to a bogey. On the 16th, his approach shot settled 27 feet from the hole, but he somehow three-putted with a lip-out from about 2½ feet.
After a nice up-and-down save from a greenside bunker on the 17th, he opted to hit driver on No. 18 and pulled his tee shot into native grass. He punched out and chipped his third shot to 3 feet, 9 inches above the hole. He missed the par putt.
“I think any golfer, any human being who’s watched Rory finish with those missed putts on 16 and 18 really felt for him,” European Ryder Cup team captain Luke Donald said. “I certainly did. Sixteen was a poor putt, and 18 was just a very, very difficult putt. The mistake, I think, was just leaving the chip slightly above the hole, and it was a very, very difficult putt under the circumstances — even without those circumstances.”
After McIlroy’s collapse at Pinehurst No. 2, he pulled out of the Travelers Championship, the last signature event on the PGA Tour schedule, and spent a few nights in New York. He took three weeks off from competitive golf until returning at the Scottish Open.
“I’ve always liked to figure things out myself,” McIlroy said. “I’m not really one to reach out for advice. Not to say that there was a lot of unsolicited advice coming my way but, yeah, I’ve always tried to figure things out myself. Because then for me, I’ve always wanted to own it. I’ve always wanted to own my success and my disappointments, and I think figuring it out yourself and giving yourself that time is a good thing.”
McIlroy admits he started feeling uncomfortable while waiting to hit his second putt on the 16th hole. Because of the routing at Pinehurst No. 2, he was able to see what DeChambeau was doing without looking at the scoreboard.
“Thinking back, yeah, maybe I was a little too aware of where Bryson was and what he was doing but it was the nature of the golf course and how the golf course flowed,” McIlroy said. “So it sort of got me out of my own little world a little bit.”
Even Woods, an 82-time winner on tour and a 15-time major champion, said he felt uncomfortable on plenty of putts during his career.
“You look at the highlights, I’ve missed plenty of putts,” Woods said. “I’ve missed plenty of shots. Just like Jordan, when they said how many shots have you taken? You see all the game-winning shots, but also he’s missed a ton of game-winning shots too. The thing is you still take the game-winning shot, and I still want the last putt.”
On his second putt on the 16th, McIlroy hit a 2½-footer too hard, and his ball lipped out. He hadn’t missed a putt inside three feet all season.
On the 18th, McIlroy and DeChambeau both pulled their tee shots into the native area. After reaching the green, McIlroy wanted to make sure he didn’t blast his par putt past the hole if he missed. He tapped his ball on the wrong side of the hole and missed.
“So much about this game, particularly putting, we want to know what happens,” said Brad Faxon, McIlroy’s putting coach. “Is it something that’s mechanical? Does your stroke just leave you in a second? Or is it the way your mind works? When you’re a coach to a top player in putting, so much of it is what happens in a situation, rather than the details of the stroke and the face and the path. I think that’s why we love and hate this game so much is what it can do to the human mind.
“There was certainly nothing wrong with Rory’s stroke at all. He had made 469 of those putts of 3 feet and under in a row. That’s just a situation that sometimes gets the best of the best players in the world.”
AS MCILROY CONTINUES to analyze what happened at Pinehurst No. 2, he won’t watch highlights like Norman did with the 1996 Masters. His memories of his first victory in a major at the 2011 U.S. Open at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland, are a product of the highlights he has watched on YouTube and TV.
McIlroy prefers to recall his disappointments through his own recollections of each hole.
“I try not to watch anything back,” McIlroy said. “So I try to put myself back in that position and really just remember it through my eyes and my mind and maybe some feelings that came up because there’s been times, and I’ve talked about this, but I’ve watched back so much of my first U.S. Open win or some of my other wins that I can’t remember the feelings I had.
“Honestly, my memories of the U.S. Open at Congressional are through the TV, so I really try to do a good job of not watching anything back and putting myself in those positions and thinking about what were you feeling, what would you do differently if you had it again, and taking yourself to those dark places and trying to get through them.”
While McIlroy prefers to own his successes and disappointments, plenty of others have offered their opinions about what caused him to finish second at Pinehurst No. 2. Former pro Smylie Kaufman, now an on-course analyst for NBC Sports, said on a podcast that McIlroy’s caddie, Harry Diamond, should have stepped in when McIlroy wanted to hit a 7-iron on the par-3 15th hole.
“He did not have the right club in his hands,” Kaufman said on Golf’s Subpar podcast. “And I felt like Rory could have taken control of the championship on 15 if he just hits it in the middle of the green. And he hit a good shot, but it just was the wrong club.”
Longtime swing coach Hank Haney, who worked with Tiger Woods in the past, suggested a more experienced caddie like Steve Williams wouldn’t have made the same mistake.
I will say this, if Steve Williams was Rory’s caddie I can promise you he would have never hit a perfect flighted 7 iron that rolled over the green on 15 into a terrible lie because he would have hit an 8 iron and sent it straight up in the air and held the green.
— Hank Haney (@HankHaney) June 18, 2024
“You know, it’s certainly unfair,” McIlroy said. “Hank Haney has never been in that position. Smylie has been in that position once. I love Smylie, and he was out there with us on 18, but just because Harry is not as vocal or loud with his words as other caddies, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t say anything and that he doesn’t do anything. I just wish that, you know, these guys that criticize when things don’t go my way, they never say anything good when things do go my way.”
Diamond and McIlroy have been longtime friends; Diamond was the best man in McIlroy’s wedding. They’ve been working together since 2017 and have won 12 times.
“So where were they when I won Dubai earlier this year, or Quail Hollow, or the two FedExCups that I’ve won with Harry, or the two Ryder Cups … or whatever?” McIlroy said. “They are never there to say Harry did such a great job when I win, but they are always there to criticize when we don’t win.
“At the end of the day, they are not there. They are not in the arena. They are not the ones hitting the shots and making the decisions. Someone said to me once, if you would never take advice from these people, you would never take their criticisms, either. Certainly wouldn’t go to Hank Haney for advice. I love Smylie, but I think I know what I’m doing, and so does Harry.”
Scottish golfer Colin Montgomerie, who is still playing on senior tours in the U.S. and Europe, also wondered why Diamond didn’t stop McIlroy from hitting a driver off the tee on the 18th hole in the final round.
“He hadn’t done it all week and the caddie should have stopped him,” Montgomerie told The Telegraph of London.
Montgomerie was a 54-time worldwide winner and five-time runner-up in the majors. He had a 1-stroke lead going into the 72nd hole in the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot in New York. He hit the fairway with his tee shot but missed the green from 172 yards. He three-putted for double-bogey. Montgomerie lost to Geoff Ogilvy by 1. Montgomerie never captured one of the big four.
“Faldo said something on the commentary and I agree,” Montgomerie said. “If he does not win another major this could haunt him for the rest of his life, not just career.”
MCILROY DOESN’T BELIEVE it will. He called his near-misses at the 2011 Masters and the 2022 Open Championship at St. Andrews more painful than what happened at Pinehurst No. 2.
“I think as you achieve more in the game, you can soften the blow, if you look at everything I’ve been able to accomplish,” McIlroy said. “It’s been a while since I’ve won a major but it hurt but I felt worse after some other losses. I felt worse after Augusta in ’11 and I felt worse after St Andrews. It was up there with the tough losses but not the toughest.”
As a 21-year-old, he had a 4-stroke lead heading into the final round at Augusta National. On the par-4 10th hole, McIlroy snap-hooked his tee shot into the towering pines on the left and carded a triple-bogey 7. He fell from first to seventh on a crowded leaderboard.
Things would only get worse at Amen Corner. McIlroy three-putted for bogey on the 11th and four-putted for double bogey on the 12th. After he hooked his tee shot on the 13th into Rae’s Creek, he buried his head in his right arm.
McIlroy posted an 8-over 80, the worst score for a final-round leader in the 75-year history of the tournament. He tied for 15th place at 4 under, 10 shots behind Charl Schwartzel, the unlikely South African champion.
About two months later, McIlroy rebounded to win at Congressional by a whopping 8 shots, setting the U.S. Open scoring record at 16-under 268. He became the youngest winner of the U.S. Open since Bobby Jones in 1923.
McIlroy will look to do the same at Royal Troon, where he tied for fifth at 4 under in the 2016 Open Championship, albeit 16 shots behind winner Henrik Stenson of Sweden.
“It will be hard, for sure,” Justin Rose said. “But I think he’s probably got the bit between the teeth. I’ve always felt that way about Rory. When he gets criticized, when people start to doubt him, that’s when he starts to play his best.”