Rónán MacNamara in Royal Troon
It’s very easy to look at Rory McIlroy’s record and see twenty top-10 finishes since he won his last major championship at the 2014 PGA Championship and think it’s been a decade of near misses.
Well, it hasn’t. Not really.
The reality is that McIlroy has had great chances to win that elusive fifth major title at the 2022 Open Championship, 2023 US Open and 2024 US Open. The majority of his last 20 top-10 finishes have seen him sneak in through the backdoor on Sunday.
“Shooting 65 on a Sunday is not being in the lead, you have to put yourself right in that position,” said three-time major champion Pádraig Harrington.
“Right there, right now he’s playing great. I look at the last Sunday, he dominated, he dominated all week. It would have been hard to play with him in Pinehurst he was that good. That was a much different performance than we have seen over the last five or six years.”
McIlroy has endured real major heartache over the last three seasons. Cameron Smith stole in with a blistering final round to pinch the Claret Jug from his grasp at St Andrews while the lesser known Wyndham Clark held him off in LA. Although the way Clark has performed since makes his maiden major win less and less of a surprise.
The 152nd Open Championship in Royal Troon this week, where McIlroy was previously fifth in 2016 represents the last chance for the Holywood man to avoid entering an eleventh successive season without a major title.
Many assume when the fifth major lands it will re-open the floodgates for Rory to embark on a similar run that saw him reel off four majors between 2011 and 2014. However, what happened in Pinehurst just last month will have hurt deeply and it was the first time since 2014 where he had a major trophy in his grasp but fumbled it at the last hurdle.
For now, McIlroy will continue to face the age old question: When?
“It doesn’t bother me. I know that I’m in a good spot. If I think about 2015 through 2020, that five-year stretch I seldom had a realistic chance to win a major championship in that five-year period. So I’d much rather have these close calls. It means that I’m getting closer.
“But yeah, absolutely, I’d love to be able to play the golf and get one over the line, but as soon as I do that, people are going to say, well, when are you going to win your sixth? So it’s never ending.”
It’s important that McIlroy carries positivity despite his bitter loss in North Carolina. It was the first time he has held the lead in a major going down the closing stretch since 2014 and had a tournament in his own hands.
Speaking to Harrington, he feels what happened in Pinehurst was still a positive week for Rory and was an improvement on what he has mainly produced in the majors over the last decade.
“I’m sure I’ve had poor majors where I did badly. I think you’re asking if I’ve had a good major,” said the 52-year-old.
“I had three pars to win in Winged Foot in 2006 and hit the three fairways. I think that qualifies as really messing it up. I even had a putt on the last to be in a playoff but I felt good about my game because I was very much in control and got myself in that position for the first time where I felt I was there within myself comfortably.
“So I think if you’re asking about Rory, Rory can look at that and go… he had it in his hands with ease with four holes to play or coming down the last or whatever way you want to look at it so he’s got to feel pretty comfortable that it wasn’t a big stretch for him to be in that position and the more often you’re in that position, sometimes you’ll do some great things and sometimes somebody else will miss the putt on 18 so you just have to be there.
“You can’t win unless you put yourself out and he obviously should feel good about his game and where he’s at.
“It was a quality performance that just faltered at the last hurdle, much different to many of the other ones. That was his to win and if he can walk away thinking that there will be many more that will be his to win and he might not win them all but I guarantee a couple will fall his way.”
