To Play or Not To Play?

Rory McIlroy, a professional golfer and member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, is unlikely to play in the British Open this year. End of the article, right? Well, not quite! While McIlroy won’t be playing in the British Open this year, there’s no harm in taking a look back over his career and the reasons that lead him to his decision to forgo one of the top events on the worldwide golf calendar.

The Low Down

McIlroy was born to parents Gerry and Rosie in 1989. He was raised and attended school in Holywood, Northern Ireland. McIlroy had an obvious talent for golf from a young age and was helped along the path to what would one day be an incredible career by his father, who coached him. A great golfer himself, Gerry took his son to the Holywood Golf Club almost every day. There’s even a rumour, who knows if it’s true or not, that little Rory finally received a much-desired golf club as a gift and, once shown the correct grip by his father, took the club to bed with him at night and fell asleep practising that grip.

When Rory joined the Holywood Golf Club, he was the youngest member at only seven years old. Seeing his son’s potential, Gerry found and held down several jobs to earn extra income to support his son’s burgeoning pursuit of golf as a career. His mother Rosie worked extra shifts at the 3M plant. His parents’ sacrifices were not wasted. Rory’s first taste of victory came soon when he dominated the age 9-10 bracket of the World Championships in Florida. Once it became clear that he was set on a good road, Rory took up training with Michael Bannon, who had previously been the golf pro at the Holywood Club.

His career continued to blossom, and at 15 years old, Rory became a member of the Irish National Team as well as the European Junior Ryder Cup team. In 2005, he became the youngest person ever to win the West of Ireland and the Irish Close Championships. Initially, he had planned to take a golf scholarship to East Tennessee State University but later decided against this in favour of playing amateur golf.

When McIlroy turned 18 in 2007, his career switched over to being a professional one. Conveniently, this was immediately before the Quinn Direct British Masters. He signed with International Sports Management, and just like that, he was on track to becoming one of the best golfers in the world.

Recently

In February 2020, McIlroy became the best golfer in the world, snatching the title from Brooks Koepka. Playing alongside Dustin Johnson, McIlroy won 1.53 million pounds for CoronaVirus relief in one of the first golf matches played live since the outbreak of the virus. Unfortunately, for McIlroy, he wasn’t number one for long: he was overtaken by Jon Rahm in July. In January of last year, McIlroy came in third place at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship and won the Wells Fargo Championship for the third time. November saw McIlroy falter a bit and end up finishing five shots behind the winner of the DP World Tour Championship, Collin Morikawa.

No Scottish Open for McIlroy

The venue in East Lothian is preparing to see a tremendous amount of talent at the Scottish Open this year. Despite the fact that McIlroy has already played this beautiful course twice, he says it’s highly unlikely he’ll be playing it at the Scottish Open. He feels, no doubt helped along by his falter late last year, that his play-throughs on the course so far have simply not been good enough for him to feel confident entering such a prestigious tournament in his current shape. McIlroy feels that if he changes things up a little, he can be in better form for the upcoming tournament at St Andrews. The golfer is likely to skip anything to do with the Open and head straight to St Andrews for a little while before the tournament begins. With such a strong focus being placed on the mental health and happiness of sportspeople, we think that it’s wise that McIlroy is doing what he thinks is best for himself and his own career rather than bowing to what is undoubtedly considerable pressure to play in the Scottish Open.

Wrap Up

While his fans are, of course, saddened that they will not be seeing their favourite golfer at the Open this year, we are sure that they all wish him well. We look forward to his next appearance and wish him all the best.