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ROME — Rory McIlroy was still fuming late Saturday night.
He was a little embarrassed too, but he also felt his anger was justified. Video of him shouting expletives at Jim “Bones” McKay in the parking lot of Marco de Simone had gone viral a few hours earlier, but Bones wasn’t actually the target of his anger. Bones just happened to be the first American that McIlroy encountered outside the locker room when he was leaving the course, still pissed off about what happened at the end of his match that afternoon against Patrick Cantlay.
McIlroy and Cantlay are not friends, and at times there has been tension between them over the financial future of the PGA Tour, but on the course, there had always been mutual respect. Yet when Cantlay’s caddie Joe LaCava danced around the 18th green on Saturday night, waving his hat for nearly 30 seconds after Cantlay made a long birdie putt, McIlroy felt like one of golf’s admittedly quirky but also clear lines of etiquette had been crossed. You don’t interfere with a player when he’s lining up a putt in a match, and you sure as hell don't do it if you’re a caddie. McIlroy and Matt Fitzpatrick still had a pair of putts left and a chance to tie the hole. LaCava continued a heated exchange with Shane Lowry even as McIlroy crouched down to read his line.
“We talked about it as a team last night,” McIlroy said. “We felt like it was disrespectful, and it wasn't just disrespectful to Fitz and I. It was disrespectful to the whole team.”
He couldn’t let it go, especially after losing the match. “I felt like I played the match in the right spirit, and I don’t feel like that spirit was reciprocated to me,” McIlroy said.
When he saw Bones on his way to the car an hour later, his anger returned.
“It’s a fucking disgrace!” McIlroy shouted as his wife, Erica, and also Lowry, managed to stuff him into the back of a courtesy car. “It can’t fucking happen!” When he got to the team hotel, Lowry dragged him down to the cold tubs and told him to cool down, literally and figuratively. By the time he climbed into bed, he was exhausted, but still buzzing.
“Erica and I put on the Calm App and listened to a sleep story, and that actually helped me fall asleep,” he said.
When he woke, he was rested but still wasn’t sure he was ready to let the incident go. He reached for a copy of Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations,” which he’d brought with him to Rome.
“I've studied Stoicism for a while and read a lot of those sort of books,” McIlroy said. “I just thought as a former emperor of Rome and seeing that we are in Rome, I thought it would be a good time to revisit some of his thoughts, and I revisited them on the way to the course.”
What stood out to him?
“Humility and gentleness,” McIlroy said. “Those are better virtues than being frustrated and angry.”
If you wanted to be reminded why the Ryder Cup is so much better than other events staged within the universe of professional golf — why it’s the only tournament that could enrage a 4-time major winner over a small grievance and then send him running to Marcus Aurelius for wisdom — then this week was a delight.
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You’ll be able to visit Wikipedia in the near and distant future and remind yourself that Europe won the 2023 Ryder Cup by a score of 16 ½ to 11 ½, and that it held serve for the seventh straight time at home. But the score and the match results won’t properly tell the tale of what happened. Somehow, it was both closer than the point totals will suggest, and yet also ultimately a blowout very few saw coming. A surreal controversy over a hat, and whether or not it represented a fashion choice or a principled protest, became a major storyline. A new Ryder Cup stalwart (Max Homa) emerged for the U.S., as well as one for the Europeans (Viktor Hovland) and an old European lion (Justin Rose) inched his way toward the sunset with one last signature moment.
In the middle of it all was McIlroy, who delivered the best Ryder Cup performance of his career, going 4-1. No other player earned as many points. He may not be the best golfer in the world at age 34. He may have gone a full decade without winning a major. But he remains the game’s central figure, whether you admire him or you’re exhausted by him. He puts it all out there, his heart on the sleeve of his quarter zip, even in times when he knows he ought to dial it back.
Two years ago, he wept openly at Whistling Straits, both in the arms of his wife and during a pair of television interviews, convinced he had let his team down. That moment was on his mind prior to this week.
“I don’t know that I’d ever felt so low, not just in a Ryder Cup but in my career,” McIlroy said. “And the fact that the team had the confidence in me to send me No. 1 that Sunday and for me to go and get a point, you can trace my form back for the last couple of years back to that Sunday in Whistling Straits. It meant the world to me that these guys believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. To have a group around you like that, it means the world to me.”
No one can say whether there will be more majors in his future. But there will certainly be more Ryder Cups. The next two — at Bethpage Black in New York in 2025 and Adare Manor in Limerick, Ireland in 2027 — could be a big piece of McIlroy’s legacy.
“I've said this for the last probably six or seven years to anyone that will listen: I think one of the biggest accomplishments in golf right now is winning an away Ryder Cup,” McIlroy said in the European press conference. “And that's what we're going to do at Bethpage.”
He slapped the table in front of him as he said it. His teammates roared in approval.
If nothing else, you had to admire the audacity.
***
Patrick Cantlay is not someone who cares much about whether or not he is admired. He cares about hitting good golf shots and about getting compensated financially for it. He has expressed to numerous people in the ecosystem of golf that he believes players should be compensated for playing in the Ryder Cup. He declined the opportunity to discuss it this week, but his beliefs are hardly a secret. Stefan Schauffele, Xander Schauffle’s father, was happy to confirm as much with reporters, admitting in an interview near the putting green Sunday morning that he has been advising both his son and Cantlay on such matters.
“If the PGA of America is a for-profit organization, they need to have the players share in that profit instead of being so damned intransparent about it with intent,” Stefan Schauffele said. “They should reveal the numbers, and then we should go to the table and talk. Alternatively, they can donate all proceeds after opening the books to a charity of our joint choice, and then we will happily play for free. Please print that.”
Both Ryder Cup captains, Luke Donald and Zach Johnson, gave forceful answers when asked to weigh in on whether players deserve to get paid for the competition.
“Absolutely not,” Donald said. “What the Ryder Cup represents. It represents true sport. You saw it with some of the passion at the end there [with McIlroy.] It's a passionate event. It's about pride. It's about representing your country. It's about coming together as a team. It's the purest form of competition we have, and I think because of that, the fans love it. There's no extrinsic motivation involved. It's purely, purely sport. That's what makes it so special.”
Johnson went even further.
“When it comes to the dollar sign, I don't mean to sound cliché, but the Ryder Cup is about more than any of that,” Johnson said. “It's about standing with a band of guys to represent your nation, to represent more than you in the game of golf. It's a sport for one week. And you know what, I would say if there's anything that deals with money, there's guys that would pay to play in this.”
Whether or not Cantlay’s stance on the matter was connected to his decision this week to play golf without a hat remains a matter of dispute. He denied a Sky Sports report that framed his decision as a silent protest, saying only that he couldn’t find a hat that fit, but other outlets — including No Laying Up — have been told similar information from multiple sources. Whether it was an actual protest or an anecdote shared and then re-shared via a messy game of telephone will probably take we
Source: https://nolayingup.com/blog/sunday-scenes-from-the-2023-ryder-cup