SPORT REVIEW 2011:Rory McIlroy's triumph at the US Open, coming after his nightmarish meltdown at the US Masters, followed by Darren Clarke's fairytale win at the British Open continued Ireland's golfing success story
WHERE AND when will this golfing odyssey end? It would be understandable if an element of avarice crept into the mindset of Ireland’s golfers for, after enduring a drought of some 60 years between Fred Daly’s British Open win in 1947 and Pádraig Harrington’s annexing of the famed Claret Jug in 2007, the gifts just kept on coming in the season gone. Young and old delivered the goods.
This past year capped the lot: Rory McIlroy, the twinkle-eyed Ulsterman with a golf swing beyond compare, followed in the immediate footsteps of his friend Graeme McDowell by capturing the US Open at Congressional Country Club outside Washington DC in June in record-breaking fashion and, then, Darren Clarke – the man who believed time had passed by – had the engravers at Sandwich etching his name onto a prize he had always dreamed of claiming.
To be sure, it has been either a feast or a famine through the years; and Irish golfers – with the endeavours of McIlroy and Clarke in the summer of 2011 adding to the lustre of Harrington and McDowell – have been enjoying a veritable banquet around the golfing world these past few years.
As Luke Donald, the world number one, tweeted after McIlroy and Clarke won Majors within five weeks of one another, “Thinking about moving to Northern Ireland!!” What made McIlroy’s win all the more astonishing was that it came after one of golf’s most nightmarish meltdowns.
At the US Masters in April, McIlroy had carried a four-stroke lead into the final round but collapsed under the pressure of seeking a maiden Major title. South African Charl Schwartzel had the prized green jacket placed on his shoulders by Phil Mickelson, and everyone left Augusta wondering what wounds had been inflicted on McIlroy.
Nobody, though, could have anticipated the response.
We got our answer in June, where McIlroy had prepared for the US Open by paying a trip to visit the earthquake victims in Haiti. “I thought I had perspective before going to Haiti. And, then, actually seeing it – it just gives you a completely different view on the world and the game that you play,” said the 22-year-old, who undertook the humanitarian visit to the destitute country in his role as an ambassador for Unicef. McIlroy’s win was memorable, as much for the manner of it as the heralding of a new superstar.
The 111th staging of the US Open found a champion who contrived to shoot a record low aggregate of 16-under-par. In successive rounds, he imposed his authority with leads of three shots, six and eight . . . . and eventually finished eight shots ahead of the runner-up Jason Day, his coronation sealed by the simplest task of holing a six-inch putt on the 18th green.
If the world and its mother had felt it was only a matter of time before McIlroy would lift a Major title, then there was also a feeling as we arrived at Sandwich that the golfing gods had somehow managed to forget about a certain Darren Clarke, the player who had proven an inspiration to the men known as G-Mac and Wee Mac.
In fact, Clarke had gently ribbed Stephen Watson of the BBC about why he hadn’t been included in a pre-Open documentary that featured McIlroy and McDowell. There was a sense of the forgotten man about Clarke in the run-up to the oldest championship of them all but, once it got under way, the man from Dungannon was on the tip of everyone’s tongue.
In the 140th edition of the British Open over the quirky links of Royal St George’s on the Kentish coast, Clarke claimed the famed trophy with a grace and display of shot-making that equalled any of the great champions who had gone before him.
At the age of 42, he had found his golfing deliverance. He had watched without the slightest bit of envy as the young upstarts from Northern Ireland had claimed Majors and, this time, in his 20th appearance in the event, he took his belated turn to claim one of those titles that all professional golfers dream about. In shooting a final round of 70 for a winning aggregate of 275, five under par, Clarke had three strokes to spare over runners-up Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson.
“It’s been a dream since I was a kid to win the Open, like any kid’s dream is,” said Clarke afterwards.
His emotion was captured by the galleries. On every grandstand, on every sandy hillock, in the locker-room, there was hardly a dry eye to be found.
His arrival at the top table of golf was testament to his own self-belief and perseverance, having overcome personal trauma – with the death of his wife, Heather, to breast cancer in 2006 – to use a wonderful talent that first surfaced as an 11-year-old when his father George, a former soccer player with Glenavon and Dungannon Swifts, and mother, Hettie, took out family membership at Dungannon Golf Club. Some three decades later, he enrolled in an exclusive champions’ club that dates back to 1860.
It was a good year for teams from this side of the pond, too. Great Britain and Ireland – the underdogs – shocked a hugely-fancied USA team in the Walker Cup, with two Irishmen (Paul Cutler and Alan Dunbar) playing key parts, and, then, arguably the biggest surprise of all came when Europe – under the captaincy of Alison Nicholas – ended the USA’s dominance in the Solheim Cup at Killeen Castle in Co Meath.
Europe hadn’t lacked for inspiration in finding a way to finally usurp the Americans: the locker-room featured among other things an Irish rugby jersey presented to Nicholas by Paul O’Connell and, most notably of all, an iconic photograph of the late Seve Ballesteros. And Nicholas’s team, epitomised by the performance of Suzann Pettersen, found a way to create cult status of their own.
