Two years ago three of his parents’ friends bet £100 that Rory McIlroy would be a British Open champion before his 26th birthday. The odds of them winning that bet were 500 to 1. The investment evidently paid off handsomely. At the age of 25, Rory McIlroy has returned to the Olympus of major winners, where he first flanked the entrance in 2011 with the US Open and again acceded to that restricted and elite club in 2012 thanks to his victory in the US PGA. On both occasions, the curly-haired Northern Irishman beat the runner-up by a difference of eight strokes. In this major it seemed that things were going the same way, since, after having led the tournament from the first day, he started Sunday at the Royal Liverpool course with a six-stroke difference over the second place finisher.
However, Rory had to sweat out his victory, especially because of a Sergio Garcia who raised the excitement to the maximum in the final stretch of the tournament, when he was only two strokes behind the Northern Irishman.
But McIlroy, despite his youth, is an experienced player who did not succumb to nerves and, with a couple of key birdies in the last part of the round, finally won the precious trophy at stake. He closed with a round of 71, one under par and a total of 271 (-17), for a two-stroke victory over Garcia and Rickie Fowler.
With the triumph at Royal Liverpool, he joined Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods as the only players to win three majors at the age of 25 or younger (the Golden Bear was 23 and the Tiger 24). Now he only lacks the Masters title to complete the Grand Slam.
“It’s an unbelievable feeling,” McIlroy said before collecting the oldest trophy in golf, the claret jug. “It hasn’t been an easy day. A few people were closing in on me. I just had to stay focused and stay in the present and really concentrate on what I was doing,” he said.
Garcia was his biggest threat. He was two strokes behind when the Spaniard sent his ball into the bunker to the right of the 15th green and bogeyed. Birdies on two of the last three holes were not enough to catch McIlroy.
Garcia shot a round of 66 to finish second in one of golf’s four majors for the fourth time.
Again he was left wanting, but there were no regrets on his part, but pride in assuring that the title was not a walkover for McIlroy: “Everyone looks at second (place) and sees it as a negative, but I did the best I could.”
Fowler, who played in the final group for the second consecutive major, was never closer than three strokes behind McIlroy. He played a bogey-free round for a 273 total.
This was the first time that two consecutive majors were won outright. Germany’s Martin Kaymer did it in June at Pinehurst, winning the US Open by eight strokes.
McIlroy’s victory allowed him to climb from eighth to second in the world ranking, ever closer to returning to the top, where two years ago he was expected to remain for a long time.
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