Gavin Cooney

SO IT TURNS out Sisyphus might have quite liked the rock all along? 

The rock, after all, gave him an identity and a purpose. Without it, he’s just a guy walking up a hill. Where’s the story in that? 

After Rory McIlroy finally rolled his pock-marked rock over the hill at Augusta National, the consensus was that he was now freed of all pressure and burden and would now go on a tear through the majors.

This wasn’t just the verdict of over-excited sportswriters like your correspondent here: McIlroy himself said he was playing with house money for the rest of his career. 

When McIlroy began his press conference on Masters Sunday by asking, “What are we going to talk about next year?”, he should have known that the answer would quickly be, ‘Er, it’ll still be you, Rory.’

McIlroy cannot help but take the path of most interest, and so his post-Masters story has been more captivating than anyone might have expected. 

His form on the course has certainly slumped. A brilliant 67 at Oakmont yesterday sealed a tied-19th finish that looks a lot better than it felt, while he missed the cut at the Canadian Open with one of the worst rounds of his career and was a non-factor on favoured terrain at the PGA Championship. 

The vibes, meanwhile, have jackknifed. McIlroy has not always looked as agitated and dispirited on the course as he did at times at Oakmont – the course was so difficult that he was far from alone in tossing clubs – and he has remained as polite and decent with course volunteers and staff members as ever. 

McIlroy has, however, cut a jaded kind of melancholy with the media, declining all four post-round interview requests during the PGA Championship and maintaining his silence after his first two rounds at the US Open.

This is not to say it’s been a total blackout – McIlroy has given pre-tournament press conferences at each of his last three events and spoke after his two rounds in Canada – but that the game’s biggest star won’t speak after the biggest events is a needless failing of already put-upon fans. 

This has also provoked a disproportionate level of kickback among some in the American golf media, with some hitherto near-sycophantic journalists and podcasters caustic in their criticism of McIlroy’s gradual public withdrawal. Given McIlroy occasionally fills his travel time with these podcasts, it would be unsurprising if he was stung by the reaction.

All of this feels like part of a bigger split between McIlroy and America itself, as he plans a move to London while trimming his PGA Tour schedule and committing to play in India and Australia later this year. 

McIlroy, however, would have been better advised skipping media after his round on Saturday rather than deliver the dyspeptic, humourless four-odd minutes he did. He gave Stephen Watson of BBC Northern Ireland a two-word answer to his softball opening question, and went on to voice vague frustrations at the media in general, undermine his admirable grind in making Friday’s cut by saying he didn’t particularly want to play the weekend at all, and then rounded it all out by saying he felt he had earned the right to do whatever he wanted. 

The media should not be the chiefly offended by these abject minutes, Rory McIlroy should. He has rarely delivered public comments less representative of himself. 

McIlroy was happily more like his old self on Sunday, giving a cheery pre-round interview to NBC before shooting the joint-lowest score of the day and giving a much wordier, thoughtful post-round interview. 

“Look, I climbed my Everest in April, and I think after you do something like that, you’ve got to make your way back down, and you’ve got to look for another mountain to climb”, said McIlroy, admitting his mental focus and motivation has been absent since the Masters. 

This was the first US Open in which he finished outside the top 10 since a missed cut in 2018, after which he sat down with himself and resolved to build his game and frame his mind around the year’s biggest tests. This built the consistency that ultimately set himself back down the path to Masters glory.

Having prepared himself to win, the second major part of the breakthrough was his decision to be willing to lose. The 2022 Open, the 2023 and 2024 US Opens and the “nearly man” run in autumn last year provided enough heartbreak for anyone’s career, but also showed that McIlroy had, in how own words, learned to be “vulnerable.”

After all, anybody who wins big must first be ready to lose big. 

A crucial part of this vulnerability was his openness with the media: asked to explain away the latest gut-wrench and near-miss or preview the next weighty major title, McIlroy was hopeless at batting away a question and muttering some bromide about “the process.” Instead he engaged with an open heart and an open mind. Hence why it feels we all got the payoff at the Masters in April. 

But all of that is, frankly, exhausting, so who can blame him if he just wanted to rock up to a few majors and treat them just as golf tournaments for a while, rather than grand exhibits of his ambition, status and legacy? 

He has been doing his best to avoid stumbling onto another grand quest since the Masters, and his media withdrawal is potentially part of all of this, given we keep asking him about precisely that which he is trying to avoid.

We asked him, for instance, ahead of the PGA Championship whether he has found another career North Star after completing the career Grand Slam, to which he replied he hadn’t and nor was he seeking one. 

“I think everyone saw how hard having a north star is and being able to get over the line”, he said, adding he had “burdened” himself with the Grand Slam chase. He’s had to answer several of these media contrivances. 

But therein lies the rub. Can McIlroy continue to compete at the very elite end of a maddening and volatile sport without another north star? Is the necessary price of more ambition the weight of another burden? And does he have the appetite to carry another? 

Searching for that focus, McIlroy has trained his sights on the Open championship in Portrush next month. 

“If I can’t get motivated to get up for an Open Championship at home, then I don’t know what can motivate me”, asked McIlroy after yesterday’s final round.

That does not read as a rhetorical question, but an open one, and another question he must decide whether he wants to answer.