Now Rory McIlroy just needs to tune out the noise
During the last two holes of the final round at the Players Championship, security removed offenders who had heckled Rory McIlroy. Pic: AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
With his clubs and skills, Rory McIlroy has opened up a new level of hope and expectation as the Masters approaches. With one small moment of irritation, he also opened up a can of worms.
McIlroy mostly bedazzled the galleries that flocked to TPC Sawgrass last week with his artistry and his way of playing the game that is second to none. He was the clear fan favorite every step he made. The support for him to push over the line and win the biggest event in golf outside the majors was palpable.
So too were the barbs from drunken and/or ignorant buffoons that pierced the quiet moments during the Players Championship. McIlroy hears those, too, and those yahoos willing to shout it out and face expulsion know it.
“Yeah, absolutely,” McIlroy said when asked about the challenge of tuning out obnoxious comments while trying to win a tournament, “but I think when you’re in business mode you’re just trying to keep your head down and stay in your own little world for the most part.”
In Tuesday’s practice round, McIlroy’s business mode shields slipped for just a minute when a young man heckled him when he hit his tee shot left on the 18th tee. “Just like the 2011 Masters!” shouted Luke Potter, a University of Texas golfer who only a day before was receiving congratulations from Scottie Scheffler and Jordan Spieth after winning his first collegiate tournament at The Hayt Invitational across the street at Sawgrass Country Club.
That a top amateur golfer with presumed aspirations of playing on the PGA Tour would heckle someone the calibre of McIlroy is a worrisome story in an of itself. It’s a lapse in judgment that is sure to haunt him.
But that McIlroy let it get to him and reacted by taking the kid’s phone and prompting security to remove him from the property only emboldens the lowest echelon of golf fans.
During the most tense moments of Sunday’s final round, random drunken heckles making a 14-year callback to McIlroy’s darkest moment at Augusta or his crushing loss at last year’s US Open at Pinehurst rang out near the 17th green and on the 18th hole. In both instances, security stepped in and removed the offenders.
Golf may be a gentlemen’s game, but those who consume don’t always behave as gentleman. Golfers have been dealing with it for generations. Colin Montgomerie’s famously delicate rabbit ears made him a constant target and perhaps contributed to him never winning a major. A younger Bryson DeChambeau didn’t handle his beef with Brooks Koepka well and once fans knew how much it got to him the “Brooksie” derision became incessant. That ill will may have led to his decision to redefine himself on LIV.
McIlroy’s phone-grab reaction only opens the door for more heckling even when he remains one of the most popular players in golf. Once people know something bothers you, they tend to keep using the needle. Cruelty is the point.
The 2011 Masters remains one of the most viscerally painful moments of McIlroy’s career and he’s still trying to make up for it 14 years later and finish what he couldn’t when he was not much older than the 20-year-old who heckled him Tuesday.
McIlroy won’t have to deal with such foolish shenanigans when he steps on the property at Augusta National and tries to win the last piece of his missing career slam. The Masters doesn’t put up with such nonsense and its patrons display a well-behaved reverence.
But until he can do what he did on Monday at the Players and close out a major for the first time since 2014, McIlroy will need to tune out the noise from outside the ropes. As Nick Faldo always said, head down, blinkers on.
