Rory McIlroy finds comfort back doing what he does best

On the 17th tee of his pro-am round at the Honda Classic on Wednesday, Rory McIlroy struck up a conversation with Mike Collis, an executive officer in the Coast Guard who served as his caddie for the hole. For about 15 minutes, they spoke animatedly about strength training, a shared passion.

Collis, who said he taught CrossFit classes, was so engrossed in their exchange that he did not notice the cameras and fuzzy boom microphone capturing the encounter for a day-in-the-life commercial being shot by Bose, one of McIlroy’s corporate partners.

“I was in a bubble,” Collis said. By the time he handed the bag back to McIlroy’s regular caddie, J.P. Fitzgerald, on the 18th tee, Collis said, his regard for McIlroy had grown. “He’s a great golfer, great attitude, very humble,” Collis said.

“He didn’t know me from Adam, but we were able to strike up a conversation.”

McIlroy’s office and refuge are inside the gallery ropes. Surfacing on US soil for the first time since the Tour Championship last September, McIlroy appeared strikingly in his element, like an alligator in water. He played the first six holes of the PGA National Champion course in four under and missed one green on the front nine.

Fans clamored for McIlroy’s autograph as he moved from one green to the next tee. In previous years he signed everything thrust in front of him during the pro-am. But this year McIlroy did not let the outside world encroach on his inside-the-ropes bubble. He told autograph seekers he would sign after he was finished, and he was true to his word. But he signed for a fixed amount of time rather than accommodating every request.

The top-ranked McIlroy, 25, is the face of golf, and he will remain so unless Tiger Woods regains his championship form when he returns to competition. McIlroy has been in this position before, having assumed the Number One ranking for the first time after holding off Woods to win here in 2012.

But the crown does not feel as if it is made thorns, as it did at the 2013 Honda Classic, when a beat and beaten-down McIlroy walked off the course in the middle of his second round.

"I'm in a great position, and I feel like I handle the position I'm in a lot better than I did a couple of years ago," McIlroy said. Experience has taught McIlroy to be more protective of his time, perhaps the only thing he has too little of. He decided to follow the lead of another fan favorite, Phil Mickelson, who gets his work done before accommodating his fans.

“You have to realise what has gotten you to Number One,” McIlroy said, “and that’s keeping the focus on your golf.”

If McIlroy is the face of the game, it is in good hands, said Keegan Bradley, a major winner who counts McIlroy as a friend. "He's such a good guy," Bradley said, adding, "I feel like if we weren't golfers, we'd be friends anyway."

After Bradley won the 2011 PGA Championship, the extra attention and added demands on his time left him feeling, in his words, "a little frantic."

His experience has given him a greater appreciation, he said, for how well McIlroy has handled the spotlight.

“I just think he’s a very together person,” Bradley said. “He treats people the right way.” The Honda Classic is more than a home event for McIlroy, whose home in the United States is a short drive from the course.

The tournament is the place where his growth can be charted, like pencil marks on a wall. McIlroy has played in the event every year since 2009, his debut season on the PGA Tour. Last year he lost to Russell Henley in a four-man playoff after struggling to a 38 on the last nine of regulation.

At the time, McIlroy was newly engaged to the tennis star Caroline Wozniacki and in the midst of an ugly divorce from his management company. He broke off his engagement to Wozniacki in May, after which he went on a tear that included victories in the British Open and the PGA Championship. This month he settled his lawsuit against Dublin-based Horizon, the boutique firm that had managed him.

“I feel like everything that’s happened at the start of this year, it’s sort of like a clear road ahead,” McIlroy said. “It’s so nice just to be able to focus on golf and put all my time and effort into that.”

On days when McIlroy is striking the ball as well as he was on Wednesday, he can be scary good. Two of his major victories have been by eight strokes. In that respect, McIlroy is like Woods, who had a gear, when his game was purring, that none of his competitors could find.

In 2013, a Golf Digest article showed a symbiotic relationship between Woods' game and the Nasdaq composite index. When Woods prospered, so did the Nasdaq; when he struggled, so did the Nasdaq. Gary Kaminsky, then a CNBC contributor, told the magazine that the correlation could be attributed to the fact that stock market participants tended to be avid golfers. After watching Woods dominate on the course, Kaminsky said, they might become more bullish in thinking about their investments.

Could a pedal-pushing McIlroy have the same effect on golf’s core demographic? Kaminsky, now the vice chairman for wealth management at Morgan Stanley, said: “I think that probably would still hold true. People who plan their weekends around watching this stuff see someone taking an aggressive approach and being successful, and it emboldens their own optimism and confidence.”

McIlroy said he was comfortable being the player everyone was watching. “Of course I want to be that guy,” he said, adding, “I would be wasting my time if I was out there practicing as much as I do and putting as much into it if I didn’t want to be in this position, and wasting the people’s time around me, as well, that helped me get to this point.”

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