Thought for the Day
Is it possible to be totally partial?
Rory McIlroy
For a pro golfer to shoot 62 over one of the toughest courses on the US Tour would always be worthy of celebration. But to do it in the final round, for a most improbable victory – in fact your debut win in America, at the age of 20 – is almost too much to take in. So it is right and fitting that Rory McIlroy should probably wake up tomorrow morning with an almighty hangover because today (May 4th) is his 21st birthday, so he can now legally drink in the USA.
I feel obliged, however, to add just one wee caveat to his victory, and that is, he did it in exactly the right way by, if you will pardon the expression, coming from behind. So consistent has McIlroy been that we perhaps need to remind ourselves that he let one very good chance of winning slip through his fingers (when he missed a four foot putt to win the 2008 Omega European Masters, and then another less than half that distance in the playoff). And he eventually hung on for his only European Tour win at last year’s Dubai Desert Classic, squandering most of a six-stroke lead down the stretch to eventually triumph by a stroke. In short, when the pressure was on and he was locked in a tense battle, he did not look entirely convincing.
So storming through the field, after making the cut right on the line, with a weekend performance in which he was 16-under par for two rounds, would have been comparatively stress-free – by the time he realised he was leading, he was in that zone of concentration in which anything is possible. And now, of course, having that win under his belt will hopefully propel him ever onward and upward because it offers confirmation that he can take on and beat the best in the world.
And of course, continuing the theme of precocious youth, in Japan Ryo Ishikawa shot a 12-under par 58, and he’s still a full three years shy of being able to get legally drunk in the States. And if that weren’t enough, this Thursday the Italian sensation Matteo Manassero makes his professional debut, in his home national championship, at the age of 17 years and 17 days, making him the second youngest golfer ever on the European Tour (Seve Ballesteros was just nine days younger when he made his debut).
Someone once said that youth was wasted on the young. I couldn’t agree more.
Platypus Ridge
Watching events at Quail Hollow reminded me of an American journalist friend who has a theory about the way in which Yanks decide how to name their golf courses. He thinks they have two master lists, one of animals (deer, eagle, buffalo, tiger and so on), and the other of geographical features (mountain, desert, lake, wood). Once your course is built, you simply pick one from each list, entirely at random, and end up with somewhere like Quail Hollow, Buffalo Ridge or Rattlesnake Canyon.
It works surprisingly well.
Handy excuse
Because the Quail Hollow Championship was Tiger Woods’ (there’s that course name thing again) first regular US Tour event for a while, the TV gossip and celebrity shows Extra and Inside Edition both applied for accreditation to cover the event. Both were refused and the reason given was that the deadline for accreditation had passed.
Yeah, right
Bowing out gracefully
Lorena Ochoa has, as far as I am aware, done something unique in professional sports and that is, she has retired when ranked world number one (Annika Sorenstam had lost that title by the time she left the game). Which simply underlines what we have known all along about this gracious, warm-hearted Mexican, that she is far too sane for the daily grind that is a Tour professional’s life.
At the age of 28 she recently married a man with three children and wants more of her own and speaking of her decision she said: ‘I am happy; I am at peace. I want to be remembered as a person, for the things outside the golf course.’
Let us hope she achieves, as PG Wodehouse once wrote: ‘The complete serenity that only comes to the man who has given up golf.’
Quote of the Week
Don’t play too much golf. Two rounds a day are plenty.
Harry Vardon