Rory McIlroy – To Golf, Or Not To Golf, That Is The Question

Does Rory McIlroy’s protracted identity crisis signal the premature end of his competitive career?

Rory McIlroy says he doesn’t need golf to feel complete. What’s going on in the head of the world’s number 3 pro golfer?

Related Story: McIlroy - I don't need golf to feel complete anymore

Could it be that McIlroy has actually burned out on the game?  When Prince Hamlet posed a similar question he was contemplating suicide, and while I don’t think McIlroy is doing that, I wonder if he’s at a point where he needs to step away from the competition for a while. That’s certainly a moderated form of suicide for an athlete like him.

Look at the evidence, beginning last year with his dithering over the Olympics. That’s where this crisis first surfaced.

First he was going to play for Ireland, then for England. Or was it the other way around, first England, then Ireland? Whatever the sequence of rejected choices, he eventually withdrew entirely from the 2016 Olympics because he felt golf had gotten snarled in politics. Never mind that it was a decision he came to regret, as did Jordan Spieth.

Perhaps McIlroy got spooked by the Zika thing but didn’t want to admit it. Certainly others fell into that trap. But I don’t think that’s what happened. I think McIlroy was simply unable to resolve the monumental identity crisis that revolved about a decision he ultimately couldn’t make.

I get what McIlroy’s talking about when he argues that the game shouldn’t get ensnared in politics. There’s a purity about golf that’s sullied by political imbroglios.

Into The Fire . . .

But McIlroy doesn’t seem to have transcended the moment of crisis that overwhelmed him last summer. He’s not playing golf with any level of enthusiasm. I know he sustained an injury that’s holding him back from competition, but it didn’t interfere with his ability to go a round with Donald Trump recently. That round generated a firestorm of political controversy that went well beyond the debate over Olympic golf.

it was a round over which McIlroy suffered more than his fair share of the slings and arrows of life’s outrageous fortune. No matter that the Ulsterman deflected the criticisms with some sane and reasoned discourse.

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These kinds of public scenes carry an emotional cost that McIlroy must surely pay. The question now is will he be able to regain balance and focus in time to deliver his best game when it matters the most, at the 2017 Masters?

Perhaps even more crucial is the question of whether or not Rory McIlroy even wants to play competitive golf any more?

We’ll get a sense of his commitment to the game and his competitive career soon enough, as he works through this run-up to the 2017 Masters.

I, for one, hope he finds his way back to the tee box. Rory McIlroy still has a Grand Slam to complete.

Next: 2017 Masters: An Early Look at the Top Five

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