CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Imagine your life’s dream: Opening a beloved restaurant, say, or singing on Broadway or ascending Mount Everest. Now, imagine achieving that dream at age 35, with (presumably, hopefully) more than half of your life still ahead of you. What do you do with the rest of your days?
If you’re Rory McIlroy … you’re not quite sure just yet.
When he collapsed in exultation and exhaustion on the 18th green at Augusta National last month, McIlroy wept, the kind of deep, heaving sobs that only come when you've achieved everything you've wanted for so, so long. In that moment, he wasn't thinking of the future, he was only feeling the weight of three decades of hopes and ambitions lifted from his shoulders.
McIlroy hasn’t watched that Masters finish very much, and for a fascinating reason. “I want to remember the feelings,” he said. “When I rewatch a lot of things back, I then just remember the visuals of the TV rather than what I was feeling and what I was seeing through my own eyes, so I haven't tried to watch it back too much.”
Whenever he does — and how could you escape it if you’re anywhere near any golf media? — the full weight of the moment smothers him once again. “Any time I have (watched it), I well up. I still feel like I want to cry,” he said. “I've never felt a release like that before, and I might never feel a release like that again. That could be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and it was a very cool moment.”
Now, though, that moment is fading in the rear view, and McIlroy is facing the rest of his career, the rest of his life without a defining goal. And that’s left him … not adrift, really, but searching nonetheless, searching for something he hasn’t quite defined just yet. .
“I have achieved everything that I've wanted,” McIlroy said early Wednesday morning before the PGA Championship. “I've done everything I've wanted to do in the game. I dreamed as a child of becoming the best player in the world and winning all the majors. I've done that. Everything beyond this, for however long I decide to play the game competitively, is a bonus.”
Exactly one year ago, McIlroy entered his press conference at the PGA Championship in Valhalla under a black cloud of on-course futility and off-course pain. He hadn’t won a major since 2014, when a win at The Open Championship that year left him a Masters victory shy of completing the career grand slam, and he’d just announced that he would be seeking a divorce from his wife. (The couple reconciled soon afterward.) On that day, he accepted only questions about his golf game, and his responses were clipped and terse.
Wednesday, he bounded into Quail Hollow’s player interview tent with clear enthusiasm — plus a notably green baseball cap. And why not? He’s coming off the defining win of his career, and he’s about to tee it up at a course where he’s won four times, including his first Tour victory. Life literally could not be better for McIlroy right now, at least on the professional front.
Like a musician warming up the crowd with a familiar tune, McIlroy began with a train of thought that had served him well throughout his decade-long major drought: “I turn up and try to have the same attitude and the same approach to each and every tournament and try to get the best out of myself,” he said. “Some weeks that results in wins, and some weeks it doesn't.”
That let-the-putts-roll-where-they-may attitude works well when you're finishing just short of a trophy again and again and again, but now that McIlroy is a champion by every measure, they're less a philosophy and more a filibuster. McIlroy revealed a bit more a few questions later, when asked whether he had another North Star goal now that he's achieved the biggest one.
“I think everyone saw how hard having a North Star is and being able to get over the line,” he said. “I feel like I sort of burdened myself with the career grand slam stuff, and I want to enjoy this. I want to enjoy what I've achieved, and I want to enjoy the last decade or whatever of my career, and I don't want to burden myself by numbers or statistics.”
He’s often hinted, suggested or outright declared that he wants to be the best ever European player, or the best ever international player, and he’s already very much in that conversation. Only Gary Player (9 majors), Harry Vardon (7 majors) and Nick Faldo (6 majors) rank ahead of McIlroy’s five majors among international players … and that ranking could change by Sunday.
Regardless of how this week at Quail Hollow goes — and history suggests that it could go very well for McIlroy — he knows he’s on the other side of a mountain here. Maybe he’ll win this week, and win the U.S. Open at Oakmont, and that will transform this year’s Open Championship at Portrush into one of the most-anticipated tournaments in history. And maybe he’ll just card a reasonable top-five this week, and that will be that for the single-season grand slam talk.
Either way, McIlroy is figuring it all out as he goes along, and still basking in the glow of that magnificent Masters win. “It's everything I thought it would be,” he said. “Look, everyone needs to have goals and dreams, and I've been able to do something that I dreamed of for a long time. I'm still going to set myself goals. I'm still going to try to achieve certain things. But I sit here knowing that that very well could be the highlight of my career.”
Maybe, freed of the burden of expectation, McIlroy will reel off another three or four majors and establish himself as unequivocally one of the best in golf history. Maybe this is it, and he’ll end his career at five majors. Either way, he’s achieved something we all long for: He’s seen all his dreams come true, and he gets to decide what’s next.