Sunday 25 May 2014

It's great to have Rory McIlroy back in golf's winners circle

Rory McIlroy has just won the European Tour's flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth in what was a quite spectacular final round of golf.

Shooting a wonderful round of 66, the Northern Irishman finally grabbed his first win of the 2014 season at just the right time with three Majors coming up over the summer as well as the race to make the Ryder Cup team in September really hotting up.

And what a week for McIlroy to win such a big event. As was well documented on Wednesday and throughout the tournament, the two time Major winner has broken off his engagement and relationship with tennis star Caroline Wozniacki. Now let's be spared of people saying McIlroy is brave in winning this tournament. On the eve of the tournament, he hadn't lost a close family member or friend.

But a break up is never easy to do particularly after they got engaged only on New Years Day and had started to send out wedding invitations last weekend. It would only have been natural for McIlroy to let that play on his mind on the course throughout the four days of competition and his golf was up and down all week.

But unlike Thomas Bjorn who started the day seven ahead of McIlroy and five ahead of his closest challenger Luke Donald, McIlroy truly delivered when it mattered most as he so often has during his career so far on a Sunday.

He had promised a lot so far this season with regular top tens over in America including a tied second at The Honda Classic and good performances at The Masters and The Players Championship.

As many have said in the wake of this win, it shows how foolish it is to predict golf tournaments but it does seem that breaking up with Wozniacki has given McIlroy a boost. I'm not saying for a moment that every club golfer or indeed professionals should suddenly call off relationships but McIlroy's form had suffered over the last year or so when in a very public relationship with another famous sports star though of course Wozniacki wasn't the only reason for that poor form.

With Tiger Woods injured right now, there can be no doubting that McIlroy is key to drawing crowds in at tournaments and on TV and that was certainly the case at a superbly attended PGA Championship at Wentworth. 

With the US Open just around the corner McIlroy has grabbed the bull by the horns and got himself back in the winners circle at just the right time. And on the back nine today, he was striking the ball as well as he has done in a long time and looked mentally in the zone.

That can only be a good thing for golf. Summer 2014 for Rory McIlroy might just be about to be massive.

No comments:

Post a Comment