August 10th 2014, Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A.: As Rory McIlroy stood on a muddy hill behind the 18th green at Valhalla Golf Club and awaited another major trophy presentation, the bottoms of his white pants filthy from slugging it out with some of the biggest names in golf, a lone voice cut through the masses and the darkness.
“Rory!” the male voice shouted. “You’re the man!”
He is indeed. Take a good look because the 25-year-old Northern Irishman transformed right in front of us with his victory Sunday at the PGA Championship.
If his his major triumph a few weeks ago at Royal Liverpool was for his "mum," and the one before that two years ago at Kiawah Island for his dad, then this one was for him. The first major he won at Congressional was a spectacle, but this victory was a statement.
It was stamped with a low, cutting 3-wood that McIlroy necked off the soggy green muck to reach the par-5 10th in two. “The ball flight was probably around 30 feet lower than I intended, and the line of the shot was probably around 15 yards left of where I intended,” McIlroy admitted. “It was lucky, it really was.”
But the best always make their own luck and that’s why this win was the most satisfying of them all to McIlroy. His first three majors were basically blowouts -- two of them by eight shots, another by an easy two. This one required him to fight.
Fight through coming out flat, playing his first six holes in 2 over and watching his lead evaporate. Fight through Phil Mickelson, fellow boy wonder Rickie Fowler and reigning FedExCup champ Henrik Stenson. Fight through a slow slog around a waterlogged golf course and a wacky finish as players raced to beat the disappearing daylight.
“I just knew,” McIlroy said. “I knew that I'd have my chance.”
And he took it. Unlike when he blew it by playing prevent defense at Augusta in 2011, he didn't get conservative this time.
McIlroy bounced back from a messy bogey on the sixth with a must-make birdie on the easy par-5 seventh. Then he really started throwing haymakers: An eagle at 10 after slinging his ball to 7 feet, a birdie from a couple of feet on 13 and the knockout blow on 17 after rolling in a 10-footer for another birdie. A three-shot deficit at the turn was down for the count.
“That was all heart, really, coming down the stretch,” his caddie J.P. Fitzgerald said. “He saw guys were 15 under and knew he had to respond or he was beat. When you’re three behind with four or five guys in front of you, you really have to find something, step it up.”
Or step on them, which is what the 5-foot-10, 160-pound curly-haired kid with the quaint accent from Holywood, Northern Ireland did. Don’t let the charm fool you, though. He is, as David Feherty put it, a baby-faced assassin.
Just how good is McIlroy? Jack Nicklaus thinks he is capable of winning 15 or 20 majors. Heady praise, but if hyperbole isn’t your thing just listen to what Mickelson had to say when asked about McIlroy after getting beat by him Sunday.
“Better than everyone else right now,” he said. “Yeah, he's good. Really good.”
McIlroy has more majors than Jimmy Demaret, Cary Middlecoff, Billy Casper, Nick Price, Hale Irwin and Vijay Singh. He has as many as Ernie Els, Ray Floyd, Young Tom Morris and Old Tom Morris. And now he’s within one of Byron Nelson, Seve Ballesteros and Mickelson.
He’s the fourth-youngest player with four major championships behind only Young Tom, Woods and Nicklaus. Only three others have won an Open Championship and a PGA in the same year -- Woods, Price, Walter Hagen and Padraig Harrington.
“It's beginning to look a little Tiger-esque I suppose,” Graeme McDowell said. “I didn't think we were going to see the new Tiger era, as in someone creating their own kind of Tiger-esque era just yet. I'm not eating my words but I'm certainly starting to chew on them right now. ... Pretty special stuff, yeah.”
So was the way McIlroy chewed up another major.
“To win it in this fashion and this style, it means a lot,” he said. “It means that I know that I can do it. I know that I can come from behind. I know that I can mix it up with the best players in the world down the stretch in a major and come out on top.”
Which is exactly where McIlroy is now and will be for the foreseeable future after what will go down as his virtuoso performance.
