Interview: Rory McIlroy

Rory McIlroy: The year I choked and cried was also the year I grew up

Golf's disarmingly honest superstar is determined not to read about himself in future as he struggles to understand why he has gained such stellar status
Rory McIlroy, golfer
'When did I last cry over golf? I dunno – when I was kid, probably,' says Rory McIlroy. 'It’s not worth crying over, is it? It’s only a game.' Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters

Rory McIlroy leads the world of golf, if not yet in ranking points or major championships won then certainly in the unfashionable art of being up front. He is a muscular 22-year-old these days and there is, too, a muscularity about the way he tackles interlocutors. Ask me and I'll tell you, the body language says. Nothing is off limits. "I have always said I will try to answer questions honestly," he says. "I don't want to change that about myself. I think people appreciate that about me."

Is this real or an act? There is no better way to find out than to start with the most painful experience of his young life. How did he feel when he threw away his chance of winning the Masters in the full gaze of the watching world? On the 13th tee (where he snap-hooked his drive into Rae's Creek – one more humiliation on a day of many), he looked ready to burst into tears.

"I definitely felt like crying because the drive on the 13th was the one that took all my chances away," he says. "But I didn't actually cry until the next morning, when I spoke to my mum and dad. I spoke to them before I went to the airport on the Monday. My mum might have said something like: 'Oh don't worry Rory, everything will be OK,' and I just blubbed back: 'No, it won't be OK!' It was one of those things. There were so many thoughts and emotions going through my head. At the time it felt like the only chance I would have of winning at Augusta and I blew it.

"When did I last cry over golf? I dunno – when I was kid, probably. It's not worth crying over, is it? It's only a game."

Since that ghastly Sunday afternoon at Augusta, so much has happened to the Northern Irishman professionally and personally it is hard for an outsider to comprehend, though McIlroy himself has little difficulty in summing up 2011. "The year I grew up," he calls it.

Eight weeks after Augusta, McIlroy was back on centre stage at Congressional Country Club, tearing the field apart over the first three days of the US Open and heading into the final round once again with a substantial lead. This time there were no slip-ups and no tears. He won by eight shots, then stepped into the warm embrace of his father, Gerry. "It was important to have my dad there that week. He kept me calm, he said all the right things – things that were more reassuring coming from the person who knows you better than anyone else in the world," he says when asked to explain how he was able to restore his game and his morale so quickly and completely.

"On that Sunday of the Masters I remember turning on ESPN to find people talking about me. I switched over to the Golf Channel and people were talking about me. It was hard to escape. Greg Norman said something to me afterwards that stuck; that any outside influence you let into your bubble can be detrimental, even if it's just an article in a newspaper. You have to have a lot of self-discipline not to read and watch anything about yourself but that's what I will try to do from now on."

This will be difficult for someone who once supposedly had a Google alert on his iPhone which helpfully fed stories featuring his name into his email inbox. It will also be difficult for someone who, in keeping with many modern athletes, feeds so hungrily on the very criticism he professes to ignore.

"Part of the motivation I had [at the US Open] was trying to prove something to myself, that I wasn't one of those players who crumbles under the pressure, who folds, or chokes. I hate using the word choke but that's exactly what happened at the Masters. I also wanted to prove people wrong, whether it was the media or just critics in general. I wanted to show them that the person they saw on Sunday at Augusta was not the real Rory McIlroy."

Mission accomplished.

McIlroy followed his triumph at Congressional with headline-making appearances in the final two majors of the year, albeit that the headlines were not exactly positive. At Royal St George's he arrived as the favourite for the Open and departed as a vaguely ludicrous figure after complaining he didn't like playing golf in the wind, which is a bit like Chris Martin saying he doesn't like singing songs in front of big crowds. It comes with the territory, in other words.

In Ireland for his national open tournament a couple of weeks later, he played with little distinction but battled memorably on the social network site Twitter with the American television commentator Jay Townsend, who had the temerity to criticise his caddie JP Fitzgerald for a myriad perceived failings. "Shut up," McIlroy wrote. "You're a commentator and a failed golfer. Your opinion means nothing." At the PGA Championship in Atlanta, his favourite's chance disappeared at the third hole on day one when, to the bewilderment of many, including the faithful Fitzgerald, he took a swipe at his ball when it was lodged in the root of a tree off the fairway and hurt his wrist. He struggled on for 69 holes but never had a chance.

Regrets? He had few this year but almost too few to mention. "Probably what I said to Jay Townsend," he concedes. "I got a bit carried away there. I would have still have had a go at him but I would have phrased it differently. But overall I feel the decisions I have made have been good for me."

The rest of his golfing year was an exercise in sustained brilliance. He won twice, in China and Hong Kong, finished outside the top five only once and, according to best estimates, picked up more than £5m in prize money and appearance fees. That is quite a haul by anyone's standards. Throw in his many and varied multi-year, multimillion-pound sponsorship deals and it is clear that finances will no longer factor much into his career decisions. Henceforth, he will be playing for the history and glory, not the cash.

There is much to be said for that but the accumulation of vast wealth is not without dangers, not least that it is usually accompanied by fame and celebrity, twin impostors capable of corrupting the most well-intentioned soul. To the outsider McIlroy is especially vulnerable because unlike, say, Lee Westwood and Luke Donald, he oozes star quality. "Why me?" he says when asked to explain his elevated status as a rock-star athlete. "I don't know. Is it the way I play golf? My afro? I seriously don't know."

Maybe so, but he is hardly oblivious to the effects of his own charisma, the most obvious of which is that every move he makes causes ripples. For instance, pro athletes switch agents all the time and no one except those involved either care or notice. When McIlroy jettisons the ubiquitous Andrew "Chubby" Chandler this autumn in favour of the Dublin-based Horizon Sports it was top-of-the-page news. He builds a five-a-side pitch in his back garden and page three is cleared for the photo. He dumps his long-time girlfriend and the tabloid battalions move into action.

Twenty-four-hour scrutiny drives many people in his position into hiding or at least some form of enforcement seclusion. Not McIlroy. He might not chase attention but he doesn't flinch when it comes his way, otherwise why would he throw himself into a relationship with the tennis player Caroline Wozniacki, one of the most high-profile female athletes in the world.

"This is going to sound cheesy, but meeting Caroline is probably the best thing that's happened to me off the course," he says without embarrassment. "It's nice to go out with someone who shares your sense of ambition. A tennis career is much shorter so they have to put everything into it. She definitely works harder than I do, and that has been a great influence on my career."

They met in the summer when David Haye fought Wladimir Klitschko in Germany and have been together six months – more than long enough for most celebrity couples to declare all talk of their relationship as off limits. Again, McIlroy appears unconcerned by such conventions.

"Obviously, I'm not going into personal, personal stuff but if someone asks about it I'm not going to shy away," he says. "We've got to the stage where we just talk about the things that couples talk about. We both understand we are not going to see each other every week of the year but we spend a lot of time on FaceTime."

McIlroy is just as forthcoming on the other major change in his life away from the course. Next year he will rejoin the PGA Tour, basing himself in the States for lengthy periods. This self-imposed exile might serve as fuel, perhaps, for the inevitable accusations that he is abandoning his roots. "Home will always be Northern Ireland but my schedule means for the next few years I won't be there as much," he says. "I can't do the same things that I did a year ago. That is I'm something conscious of, but I'm not sad about it. It's fine. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices if you want to progress in your career. So I see less Man United games or Ulster [rugby] games? It's not a big deal in the greater scheme of things." So much for treading softly on the sensitivities of those he is about to leave behind.

Yet listening to McIlroy speak in such forthright terms it is hard not to be drawn to the raw energy of his youthful self-possession. And it is hard not to think of Tiger Woods, who was eventually brought down by his own flaws, one of which was his abject failure to communicate with others in a meaningful way.

The real sadness is that Woods wasn't always that way. Like McIlroy, he was once a purposeful and optimistic young man, talkative and interested in the world beyond himself.

Honesty has its limits, even for McIlroy, who would never speak publicly of Woods in derogatory terms. But it is inconceivable that he does not consider the former world No1 to be a cautionary tale in many ways; and that he believes there is another way to cope with the weird and wonderful life of being a global golfing superstar. "I'll be different," he must have said to himself time and again.

It will be fascinating to watch over the next few years to see if he succeeds with that worthy ambition.

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