Golf:For the first time in his young golfing life Rory McIlroy starts a tournament tomorrow knowing that by the end of it he could be world number one.
That is the extra incentive for the 22-year-old Northern Irishman in the first of this season’s world championships, the 64-man Accenture Match Play at Dove Mountain near Tucson.
McIlroy, who faces South African George Coetzee in the opening round, will go the top of the rankings if he wins the title on Sunday and defending champion Luke Donald falls at the first or second hurdle.
Given that he starts against Ernie Els, a seven-time winner of the sport’s other match play event in its days at Wentworth, Donald is taking nothing for granted.
His nine-month hold on the number one spot is also under threat from Lee Westwood, the man he took the crown off in a play-off last May.
Westwood, up against Belgian Nicolas Colsaerts tomorrow, will regain the position with victory this weekend as long as Donald does not make the quarter-finals.
But the possibility of McIlroy reaching the summit three months before his 23rd birthday is a headline grabbing development, even with Tiger Woods facing Spaniard Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano a year after Thomas Bjorn sent him packing at the same stage.
“The rankings are sort of a by-product of what you do,” said McIlroy. “I’d rather just concentrate on trying to win tournaments and trying to improve as a player. If I happen to do that, then hopefully the ranking will take care of itself.”
The week he turned professional in September 2007 McIlroy was 876th. Two weeks later, after finishing third at the Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland, he was up to 308th.
He entered the top 200 in January 2008, the top 100 in October that year, the top 50 a month later and the top 20 the following February.
By the end of that season he had made it into the top 10 and his runaway US Open triumph last June took him into the top five. If not now, then surely soon, he will become the fourth European in a row
after Westwood, Martin Kaymer and Donald
to be king of the castle.
This is his first event in America since the USPGA Championship last August
the week he hurt himself hitting against a tree root
and even if he has not won as often as he might have done since then his consistency has been staggering.
Including his victories at the Shanghai Masters and Hong Kong Open late last year, the US Open champion has had nine top five finishes in his last 10 starts.
The only other event in that time was the Dubai World Championship. He was suffering from suspected Dengue fever there and came 11th.
McIlroy desperately wants to get back to winning ways, however. He lost by one in Abu Dhabi after a “stupid” two-stroke penalty for brushing sand away off the green, then failed to build on a brilliant start in Dubai and dropped to fifth.
Those two events were won by lesser lights Robert Rock and Rafael Cabrera-Bello, underlining just how unpredictable golf is.
That is never more true than in 18-hole match play. In this event alone three-time winner Woods has been beaten twice by Nick O’Hern and also by Jeff Maggert, Peter O’Malley, Tim Clark, Chad Campbell, Bjorn and
in the 2000 final
by Darren Clarke.
They could clash again in Thursday’s second round, although Open champion Clarke, with Phil Morbey his new caddie after a parting of the ways with John Mulrooney, has been struggling lately and will have to upset the odds just to get past American Nick Watney.
Westwood is hoping to make it a hat-trick of English victories in the event following Ian Poulter and Donald, but his record is dire
not once beyond the second round in 11 attempts.
“I just don’t know why it is,” he said. “Sometimes I have not played well enough or just run up against somebody who is playing hot, but it’s very strange when you look at my record in the Ryder Cup and that I won the match play at Wentworth.”
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