Just minutes after his triumph, Rory McIlroy was back in the role. When the Northern Irishman put his final, short putt in the hole at the East Lake Golf Club near Atlanta on Sunday evening, it was officially established that he was the dominant player of the year in sporting terms. However, the sport is only part of the explanation for why McIlroy is the pre-eminent figure in golf right now.
He won the FedEx Cup, the overall season standings on the PGA Tour, with an impressive final sprint in which he intercepted the favorite American Scottie Scheffler two lanes before the end. East Lake sets the stage for such comebacks, and none occupies that stage more successfully than McIlroy, who won the prestigious season standings for the third time in his career.
When he took his seat at the press conference on Sunday, it didn’t take long before the focus was no longer on his sporting success but on sports politics again. It’s been a “challenging” year, McIlroy said, in which he wasn’t always able to focus on the sport because he was playing his other role: that of the critical observer who is now also intervening himself.
“If you believe in something, you have to talk about it,” says McIlroy – and criticizes the LIV tour
No other player is as offensive against the new Saudi Arabian LIV tour as McIlroy, no one names the problems that have arisen so clearly – and no voice of an active player has so much weight. “Every time I get a chance, I try to defend what I think is the best place to play professional golf,” McIlroy told the Saudis’ sportswashing tool about his efforts for the PGA Tour. He was asked if that wouldn’t be too exhausting for him in the long run: “No, I don’t think so,” he said: “If you believe in something, you have to talk about it. I hate what they (the LIV tour, note.) have done to the sport of golf. I hate it. For real.”
The activist position McIlroy is taking on the Golf Tour dispute is unparalleled in the sporting world – compare a weekly press conference commentary by Lionel Messi against the Super League. When it became clear in February that Saudi Arabia would soon get serious about its long-planned founding of its own golf tour, McIlroy had the chance to negotiate a high three-digit million sum with investors from the Middle East and switch tours.
A solution for every problem: Rory McIlroy is currently shining with the bat.
(Photo: Kevin C. Cox/AFP)
He could have taken the path of least resistance and – like many of his teammates – not commented on the subject. McIlroy, however, decided to make powerful statements, to openly criticize the players who switched, and ultimately to work with Tiger Woods to implement innovations on the PGA Tour.
McIlroy made no secret of this, he will also benefit financially from them, but money has long since ceased to play an important role for him: “Of all those who were in the field at the tournament, I thought the least about the prize money,” said him after his victory. McIlroy is one of the richest athletes in the world anyway, and his activist status will help ensure that this doesn’t change anytime soon. However, he does not develop the basis for his role as a sports politician at press conferences, but on the pitch: McIlroy is in the best phase of his career, the only thing missing to perfection is the next win in a major tournament that he has been hoping for for eight years.
The events in East Lake were also unique because the Americans in McIlroy chose a European to defend the PGA Tour. Scheffler, the Masters winner, Justin Thomas, the PGA Championship winner, crowd favorite Jordan Spieth – they would all be patriotic candidates for the role of defender of the old world alongside Tiger Woods. McIlroy, who is also working on saving the European Gulf, is now taking over.
McIlroy tries to convince talented Europeans like Austria’s Sepp Straka not to follow the lure of money
Firstly, by playing a home tournament near London in two weeks’ time, while others would be more likely to take a holiday after big wins. Secondly, by promoting the hopefuls: players like Viktor Hovland from Norway, Jon Rahm from Spain and Matt Fitzpatrick from England should keep the European Ryder Cup ambitions, so McIlroy wants to prevent them from switching to the Saudi tour as well.
Recently, the Austrian Sepp Straka has also joined this elite group, who crowned his rise to the top of the world with his seventh place in the season finale: The 29-year-old from Oberwaltersdorf is currently the most successful German-speaking golfer as 39th in the world rankings; a year ago he was in 214th place, now he is playing in other spheres. He cites McIlroy as one of his European role models, and there’s a good chance that both will face the USA in the Ryder Cup in Rome next year.
Until then, Rory McIlroy still has a lot to do, in all his roles: the debates about the LIV tour will not stop, but rather will be even sharper. The next chance for a major title awaits next April at the Masters, the tournament he is still missing to make the career slam. And besides all that, McIlroy is needed at home. When he had given up his role as a winner or as a sports activist after the tournament and press conference, he became a father – after all, a role with pleasantly light topics: His wife Erica Stoll and daughter Poppy reported on the phone that there had just been macaroni and cheese for dinner , while Papa Rory saved golf once again.