HOW TO FOLLOW that?
To briefly recap 2022: Shane Lowry and Seamus Power made fortunes by winning on the PGA Tour, Leona Maguire made history by winning on the LPGA Tour, Padraig Harrington made waves on the Champions Tour and Graeme McDowell made, eh, headlines on the LIV Tour.
And as for Rory McIlroy, he ended the year as world number one with top tens at all four majors while winning three PGA Tour events, the FedEx Cup, and the Race to Dubai.
Oh, and he did it all while emerging as a moral voice of utter clarity in leading the resistance to a hostile takeover of his sport by Saudi Arabia.
The moment his year ignited, it seemed, was during his final round of 64 at the Masters in April, crowned as it was by that Tiger-on-16th-style chip-in on 18.
But as it turns out, the turning point was days earlier and slightly baffling in its mundanity. He had been using the wrong ball. As McIlroy told the Sunday Independent at the end of last year, he swapped to an older version of his sponsor’s golf ball at the Masters and instantly became more comfortable.
“Before Augusta I was ranked 207th on the PGA Tour from inside 125 yards; and since Augusta I’ve been ranked number one.”
But with all the earning that followed, so too did the yearning.
McIlroy remains without a major title since 2014, his missing out on last year’s Open Championship one of the most wrenching moments of his career. Leading from the front on the final day, McIlroy did nothing wrong. The problem was that Cameron Smith did too much right.
McIlroy’s ambition at the start of this year is that of any other year: win another major. And, if he’s being picky, best to make it the Masters to earn a spot among the platinum class to have won all four.
So perhaps this will be the year. As Lionel Messi has recently shown, there need not be any prize that remains elusive to the true greats. And given McIlroy’s form, consistency, and sheer doggedness across 2022, the augurs are good. That stunning closing round last year wasn’t good enough to win last year but it might just be enough to do it this time around. “I’m getting the hang of this place after 14 years of trying”, smiled McIlroy last year.
Other majors are on offer at venues he has previously conquered, with the Open returning to Hoylake, the venue of his 2014 triumph.
Last year’s Masters offered a glimpse of the absurd strength of Irish golf at the moment, with McIlroy finishing second, Lowry tying for third, and Power ranking inside the top 30. Lowry and Power’s prime goals for the year are around September’s Ryder Cup in Rome.
Power is striving to make the team for the first time, while, Lowry, having had his first taste of the competition in 2021, now wants to win it.
“I don’t only want to be a part of the team, I want to be part of a winning team”, Lowry told the Irish Examiner recently. It’s for that reason Lowry is playing the team-format Hero Cup along with Power this week.
Lowry and McIlroy are locks for the European team, but Power may have to prove himself to join them. He is starting the year just outside the automatic qualifier places, with new captain Luke Donald picking half of his 12-man team this time around.
Padraig Harrington, meanwhile, enjoyed a sensational debut year on the Champions Tour, winning four titles and finishing second in the overall money list, behind Steven Alker despite having played four fewer events. Topping that list may be an ambition in 2023, and, should he play often enough, an inevitability based on last year’s form.
And so to the other retirement tour. After the ructions and ruptures of last year, the battle lines between the LIV and PGA Tours have been drawn, though the Saudi-backed sports laundry has reportedly nabbed Mito Pereira for the year ahead. Cam Smith’s defection at least puts a world-class, prime-aged player on the LIV cast, though they still are struggling to sell him as they remain without a broadcast deal.
Away from the course, LIV are still battling for the award of world ranking points at their events, but those still within the top 50 along with those eligible under other criteria will be allowed to compete at the Masters, which will expose major divisions at an event that usually tries to preach bland uniformity.
Those splits will take the headlines at Augusta, though Irish fans should keep an eye out for Matt McClean, the Belfast-born golfer who qualified by winning the US Mid-Amateur Championship at Erin Hills in September, beating Dubliner Hugh Foley in a play-off. That victory also earned McClean a place at the US Open.
Elsewhere, if Leona Maguire chose to come back down to earth during the off-season, she will have found herself scrunching through the broken shards of her many shattered glass ceilings. Her stunning turn at the 2021 Solheim Cup announced Maguire’s talent on a global scale and she broadly maintained that trajectory throughout 2022.
In February she became the first Irish winner on the LPGA Tour and then contended at a couple of majors, finishing eighth at the US Open and then fourth at the Women’s Open at Muirfield, the 279-year old club which admitted its first female members in 2019.
Maguire finished the year one spot outside the top 10 in the world, and as Europe’s highest-ranked golfer. 2023 ambitions must extend to taking the next, great step in winning a major, which would forever enshrine her as one of the most transformative Irish sportswomen of all time.
There are five major championships in the women’s game, with the US Open slated for Pebble Beach in June and the Women’s Open held at Walton Heath, which hosted the 1981 Ryder Cup.
The Solheim Cup will be held in Andalucia from 18 September, which offers Maguire an opportunity to reprise her heroics from the previous edition of the competition. Stephanie Meadow, currently outside the world’s top 100, will have her work cut out to qualify.
The Women’s Irish Open, meanwhile, was invigorated last year by Maguire’s presence and KPMG’s title sponsorship, and has been brought forward by three weeks in the 2023 calendar, as it would otherwise have brushed up too close to the Solheim Cup.
The men’s event is also on the move, overshadowed as it was last year by the star-studded JP McManus Pro-Am at Adare Manor. McIlroy will play at an event slated for 7 September at the K Club; a Ryder Cup tune-up at a former Ryder Cup venue.
The men’s major season will have ended by the time he returns to Ireland, and perhaps his famine will be over by then, too.
2023 Key Dates
Men’s
- Players Championship — TPC Sawgrass, Florida — 9-12 March
- US Masters — Augusta National, Georgia – 6-9 April
- PGA Championship — Oak Hill, New York — 18-21 May
- US Open — Los Angeles Country Club — 15-18 June
- Open Championship — Royal Liverpool, Hoylake — 20-23 July
- Irish Open — K Club, Kildare — 7-10 September
- Ryder Cup – Marco Simone Golf & Country Club, Rome — 29 September-1 October
Women’s
- Chevron Championship — The Club at Carlton Woods, Texas — 20-23 April
- US Open — Pebble Beach, California — 6-9 June
- PGA Championship — Baltrusol, New Jersey — 22-25 June
- Evian Championship — Evian Resort, France — 20-23 July
- Open Championship — Walton Heath, Tadworth — 3-6 August
- Irish Open — Dromoland Castle, Clare — 31 August-3 September
- Solheim Cup — Finca Cortesin, Andalusia, Spain — 22-24 September