It's fitting that the first ever post on this blog comes on the heels of an impressive US Open performance from Rory McIlroy. This eight-shot victory took place just months after his monumental collapse at The Masters during a final round in which he was brought to tears after not only vacating first place, but hitting shots in places that reminded amateurs of their own golf games. Once McIlroy reached the 13th tee box that Sunday afternoon the television coverage quickly shifted away from what most hoped would not be his career-defining round.
In sports, and golf especially, we tend to let one singular performance define an athlete. In the sport of golf, 18 holes can either erase a shaky start or flush away was would have been an outstanding outcome. More often than not, legacies are either forged through years of winning or one afternoon where a lead slipped away. Jean Van de Velde is not remembered for his four career wins, but for the closing round of the 1999 Open Championship where he needed double-bogey on his final hole to win the major and managed to make a triple-bogey to force a playoff he would eventually lose. If you ask the casual golf fan how many career PGA Tour wins Rocco Mediate has, they would be hard pressed to tell you. What they would be able to tell you, however, is where they were when he stood toe-to-toe with the former number one golfer in the world and lost in the 19th hole of a Monday playoff at Torrey Pines. Conversely, Jim Furyk has no career defining collapse to speak of, and will be remember by most as a consistent golfer who won a few tournaments, the Fed Ex Cup, and had an unusual swing.
For McIlroy, this US Open win did more than just inject $1.44 million into his bank account or open up new doors to lucrative sponsorship deals. After each round he led, fewer people questioned whether he would once again fold like he did at Augusta National. At the young age of 22 Rory McIlroy has begun revising his legacy the same way others his age revise term papers. He went from the golfer who let a Green Jacket slip away to the golfer with the most dominating performance in a US Open ever.
From this point on Rory will be the author of his own legacy, and thanks to his dominant performance at Congressional Country Club this weekend, it has gone from a tragic novel to a coming-of-age tale filled with redemption.
No comments:
Post a Comment