This past April, Rory McIlroy became the first Northern Irishman and 10th different European to win The Masters since the event was first played in 1934. Now he's back on the "island" as they call it.
While the Masters was extra special, this week, McIlroy plays in another tournament dear to his heart, the Irish Open, where he will no doubt be hailed as a hero. The site for this year’s Irish Open is The K Club in Straffan, County Kildare, Ireland, which is west of Dublin, on the east coast of the country, considerably south of his home in Northern Ireland. McIlroy said he couldn’t wait for the tournament to start.
“I've got plenty of nice memories from The K Club from over the years, from attending the Ryder Cup as a 17-year-old to obviously winning the Irish Open in 2016,” he said. “It's been a great place for me. I'm excited to be back.”
As a young phenom, McIlroy would have played many of the courses in both Ireland and Northern Ireland, and he does admit to a favorite: Royal County Down.
“I personally think it's the best course on the entire island. I obviously played well -- I played Walker Cup there and played well last year and had a good chance,” he noted.
“Growing up, it was on my doorstep, and I don't think I appreciated how good all the courses are here. I think because I travelled around and played in boys tournaments and youth tournaments and going over to Rosses Point for the west and Baltray for the east, I took for granted how good the courses were. ”
This week, what he’s hoping is that the state of his game will come together. Rory hit the ball horribly at the BMW and putted well, and then did the reverse in Atlanta at the Tour Championship. A victory, he added, isn’t necessary before the upcoming Ryder Cup, but it would be nice.
Other than his golf game, McIlroy’s focus is doing everything in his power to help the European team win a Ryder Cup on U.S. soil. He wants to be a part of that and a part of the effort. It’s one of the remaining golf goals he has said he has. He hasn’t said what will happen if he is part of a European victory at Bethpage Black.
“I think winning an away Ryder Cup, it's up there with one of the biggest achievements in the game,” he said. “There's a reason that every Ryder Cup for the last 10 years has went to the home team. The home team does have a big advantage from the setup of the golf course to how partisan the crowd is.”
Partisan is an understatement for what the crowds will be like at Bethpage Black, where the gallery counted Sergio Garcia’s regrips in the 2002 U.S. Open.
And unfortunately for Garcia, they continued to do that from time to time at other events until he got a grip, so to speak. Fortunately for Garcia, he’s not on this year’s team, and perhaps that past experience is one of the reasons. No one, even the U.S. team, wants to see him tortured by New York crowds again. He’s already been on 10 teams, so perhaps his time has come and gone.
McIlroy’s first Ryder Cup was in 2010, and he has not missed one since then. His record of 16 victories, four halves, and 13 losses, for a total of 18 points, is the eighth-best in history for Europe. While that’s outstanding, it is 10.5 points behind his good friend and sometimes Ryder Cup partner, Sergio Garcia, who leads Europe with 28.5 points in all.
McIlroy’s best record was with Thomas Pieters, the duo going 3-0-0 at Hazeltine in 2016.
While captains might be tempted to play someone like McIlroy every session, that does take a lot out of a golfer and makes it hard for him to be fresh in singles on Sunday when the points often start to get nail-bitingly close.
So, they aim to pair those with like qualities or players whose personalities match up well. Maybe one plays the par-3s well. Maybe another will have more eagle chances on the par-5s. Maybe one is a brilliant putter, a skill that has sometimes been under-discussed for U.S. teams. Maybe they are just great friends.
When asked how he viewed the strength of the 2025 European Ryder Cup team, McIlroy said the players on this year’s squad give them more flexibility than they had in Rome, where they were victorious. Better than Rome? That’s not a good thing for the U.S..
“When we went to Rome, you had some guys that were purely foursome players, some guys were purely four-ball players,” he said. “The entire team has played some really good golf between Rome and now, someone like a Bob McIntyre, who's won a couple times now on the PGA TOUR, had a chance to win the U.S. Open.”
For McIlroy, the upcoming Ryder Cup will be his eighth, and he knows that he has more experience than anyone else on the team. He’s expected to be a leader and doesn’t want to disappoint either his teammates or the European fans.
Of course, no one will know how anyone is playing until that week, so it’s impossible to predict what will happen except that the New York crowds will be brutal to the visitors.