Rory McIlroy may have completed golf’s grand slam, with a green jacket in his wardrobe at long last after April’s Masters triumph, but Team Europe’s talisman is still as hungry as ever ahead of the Ryder Cup in New York, insists Paul McGinley.
McGinley, who captained Europe to victory at Gleneagles in 2014, was hired last year as a strategic adviser to current captain Luke Donald, and spent the past week among the players on their scouting mission around Bethpage Black, the course on Long Island which will stage this year’s showpiece.
The players, caddies, their captain, his vice-captains and around 10 backroom staff, including McGinley, joined the two-day trip earlier this week, playing 27 holes around Bethpage before enjoying a night in Manhattan.
They will reunite on Monday ahead of the event’s start next Friday, as Europe look to win away from home for the first time since Medinah in 2012.
McIlroy has a positive Ryder Cup record with 16 wins, 13 losses and four halved matches across his seven events. Europe will need him to be the totemic figure who hauled four points in Rome, rather than the player who lost three of his four matches in their thrashing at Whistling Straits in 2021.
And McGinley has no doubts that a fire still burns inside McIlroy, despite his mixed form since that dramatic Masters win.
“Rory revelled in the [scouting trip],” McGinley said. “He was on a high those two-and-a-half days, being around the guys, having banter, being one of the guys, not being Rory McIlroy, the mega superstar that everybody draws on his time. Nobody was drawing on his time those two-and-a-half days, he’d no press to do, he’d no media to do, he was just one of the guys.
“He was the first guy down for dinner, down for breakfast. He was in the middle of all the laughter, in the middle of the stories. And you could see how much he loved being around that environment. I’ve no doubt that his performance at the K Club (winning the Irish Open via a dramatic play-off) was related to stepping up again and getting mentally engaged, getting ready for what he has put down.
“At the start of the year, he said one of the biggest goals in golf is to win an away Ryder Cup. So he’s mentally engaged for that. There is absolutely no doubt, no concerns whatsoever about that.”
McIlroy has dubbed winning an away Ryder Cup won of the hardest feats in sport, but McGinley says a European team has never been so prepared as Donald’s for the challenge, having drafted in motivational speakers to deliver messages about how to deal with the crowd.
“You can have all the vibe, you can have all of the nutrition, you can have all the gym work, the preparation, you can go wherever you want with all the detail,” said McGinley. “The bottom line is, can the players perform in a hostile environment? That’s the question.
“When there’s going to be a lot of shouting, a lot of roaring, maybe some personal insults thrown at you – walking from green to tee, can you reset yourself? Can you drown out that noise and reset yourself and deliver and perform in that hostile environment?”
McGinley contrasted world No 2 McIlroy’s bold, high-risk play with America’s Scottie Scheffler, the current world No 1.
“The thing about Rory is he’s always been a volatile performer. Rory’s career has never been a straight line. After his first flurry of major championships he dipped. He’s had loads of dips in his career, and then he comes roaring back.
“So he’s not a Scottie Scheffler. It’s apples and oranges. Rory is charismatic. Rory is dynamic in how he plays. He’s a risk taker and he draws people in because he plays in the Arnold Palmer style, so that guy is a little bit more hit or miss than a Scottie Scheffler who plays the percentages and is very detailed and conservative in his approach. So it’s very different. So it’s no surprise that Scottie Scheffler is leading the world rankings and I don’t know if Rory will ever lead the world rankings again, because he doesn’t have the consistency that Scottie does week in, week out, week in, week out.
Rory’s personality is in and out. He gets a flourish and he looks unbeatable, and then he looks like he’s going to miss the cut, and then he comes back again. A lot of it is mental engagement. And one of the things you can always say about Rory is – we call it pointy elbows in Ireland – when he’s got something in his sight lines, he generally achieves it, and he generally performs, when he’s really passionate about achieving something.”
Europe need 14 points to retain the Ryder Cup while the US, captained by Keegan Bradley, need 14½ to win back the trophy.
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