When athletes retire after years of devotion to their craft, it’s common to see them trade in their uniforms for suits as they look to reshape the game that shaped them. Some players go on to become coaches and others join the media as analysts, but there are a few who go on to fill the roles of primary decision-makers in their leagues or the teams within them.
In an unprecedented year in professional golf, Rory McIlroy has taken an even more unusual path. He has become that rarest of titans, someone as talented and influential behind the scenes as he is in front of the camera. On Sunday, perhaps the best player in the world defeated the same number of people on the course at East Lake Golf Club as he has this year: everyone.
Overcoming a triple-bogey start in the final of the FedEx Cup Playoffs and what (at one point) was a 10-stroke deficit to Scottie Scheffler, McIlroy won the 2022 Tour Championship, captured a record third of the career FedEx Cup and took home a cool $18 million. grand prize
On Sunday, McIlroy started six behind the Masters champion, who was trying to become the first golfer to earn more than $30 million in a single year on the PGA Tour (event earnings plus FedEx Cup prize money) and also the first to win five. times in a PGA Tour season since Justin Thomas concluded 2017 with his own FedEx Cup.
McIlroy’s momentum was immediately halted with a bogey on the first Sunday, but he plastered the field the rest of the day, playing the next 17 holes at 5 under. At one point midway through the round, he made five birdies in a nine-hole stretch, leading to a back-to-back battle between Scheffler and McIlroy with $18 million on the table, but the benchmark of the whole tournament came. on the 15th and 16th holes.
On the 220-yard par-3 15th, McIlroy safely hit an iron to the left side of the green, away from the surrounding water. Then he buried that 31-foot birdie putt, a nod to what has easily been the best putting year of his career. One hole later, after an airmailed wedge from a fairway bunker, McIlroy hit his tee shot and canned an 8-footer for par that made him the first golfer in the field to jump past Scheffler at the top. of the classification.
Through the first 69 holes of the tournament, McIlroy was either ahead or tied; he suddenly found himself at the top of the final three.
Scheffler didn’t have the game we’ve seen all season, which will likely make him the 2022 PGA Tour Player of the Year. He shot the worst round of the day with a 73. McIlroy’s 66 followed a 63 , which he completed early on Sunday as he concluded Round 3 after being suspended by bad weather on Saturday evening. He shot even-par 67 the first two days.
It was, like most of McIlroy’s wins, a spectacle. It wasn’t even close to his best performance this month either.
McIlroy and Tiger Woods led a players-only meeting at the BMW Championship last week. The end result of getting most of the world’s best golfers in the same room – and taking charge of the future of the PGA Tour – was an announcement by commissioner Jay Monahan that the best players on the PGA Tour have committed to play 13 PGA. Tour events together from 2023.
Rory has been adamant, both publicly and privately in 2022, that LIV Golf is not good for the sport. Regardless of your stance on that assessment, it’s undeniable that McIlroy has devoted his time, effort and energy to championing the PGA Tour as he tries to help reshape professional golf for the next 10, 20 or 50 years.
“I’ve been at the heart of things,” he said. “I guess every chance I get, I’m trying to defend what I think is the best place to play elite professional golf in the world. In a way it’s fitting that I was able to do that today to round out a year that’s been very, very challenging and different.”
A cynic might say McIlroy has a lot to gain from a thriving PGA Tour. This is absolutely true. His partnership with Woods in TMRW Sports, an organization that will host mock competitions in affiliation with the PGA Tour, makes both men a lot of money. However, it must also be recognized that Tiger and Rory (especially together) do not necessarily need the blessing of the PGA Tour to consolidate power and wealth. TMRW could go anywhere and be successful, and the duo collectively could have cashed out with LIV Golf to the tune of a billion dollars.
When it comes to the sport, McIlroy is exactly who you want him to be and perhaps the very person you imagine him to be. Affectionately, he is a golfer. He’s deep into Data Golf, just like you and me. Scan LIV Golf’s demand for humorous elements, just like you and me. If he wasn’t one of the top 25 golfers of all time, it’s easy to see him commenting and joking about it all, just like you and me.
There is nothing more compelling in an athlete than genuine humanity and authentic passion. Not to go all “Santa Claus isn’t real”, but most athletes play sports because they’re good at it and get paid handsomely to display that talent, not because doing so thrills their souls. And they certainly don’t care how what they do now affects the bottom line of an entire sport.
McIlroy has put that aforementioned time, effort and energy into a myriad of fronts. He’s not the commissioner of the PGA Tour, but the number of powerful people in his orbit, and the way he’s able to encourage them toward a shared vision, is enough to convince you he’d be great.
This came to a head last week during the BMW Championship, when a meeting of the Players Advisory Council (McIlroy is chairman) was followed by the aforementioned players-only meeting led by McIlroy and Woods. Getting deeply involved in these off-course scenarios, especially ones as emotional as the LIV Golf fight, can easily affect play on the course, and yet McIlroy has not only done both well, he’s absolutely thrived . Even with his mind so busy off the course during this stretch, McIlroy has played some of the best golf of his entire career.
The numbers are astonishing.
- 16 starts on the PGA Tour
- 3 wins
- 10 first 10
- 8 first placed in the four majors
- Over $28 million in earnings (tournament earnings, FedEx Cup, Comcast Business Top 10)
- 2.58 hits since Jan. 1, not including this week (not even Scheffler has been better)
Perhaps none of this is particularly surprising. McIlroy has always been extrinsically motivated, and an existential crisis in professional golf in which the way the entire infrastructure works is up in the air certainly qualifies as extrinsic motivation. In addition, golf has become an isolation.
“Honestly, golf has been the escape for me the last few weeks,” he said. “I get inside the ropes, nobody can get to me, and it’s my escape from these other things that’s happening.”
What’s perhaps more surprising than McIlroy playing great golf is that someone with generational talent in the game would also be able to launch such a strong vision while leading the game into the future with equal parts grace and conviction. McIlroy has clearly been the right man to know this moment.
“If you believe in something, I think you have to speak up, and I believe very strongly in that,” McIlroy said of the PGA Tour’s future amid the LIV Golf threat. “Really. I hate what he’s doing to the game of golf. I hate it. I really do… So yeah, I’m really sorry. I think what I’m saying are the right things, and I think when you think what you’re saying the right things, you’re happy to stick your neck out.”
Great players are not that common. The same can be said for leaders who are willing to pour themselves into something they truly believe in. Someone who can do both well, especially asynchronously, represents an unusual, perhaps even curious scarcity.
The golf world has mostly welcomed and embraced McIlroy’s rarer personas. Someone who is dynamic and reliable enough to lead his teammates as they shape the future while still playing at a high enough level to continue shaping his present. Someone who is good enough to make their voice matter and bold enough to use it. Someone who may not have asked for this battle, but whose gulf may have been inadvertently elevated to a place that means he’s the only one who can do it.