Rory McIlroy

Newly crowned world number one, Rory McIlroy, shares his views on Asia’s golfing scene and what it’s like to have won the US Open at 22

Rory McIlroy

World number one golfer Rory McIlroy confirmed his status as golf’s hottest young talent by winning the US Open last year and showed the world he is here to stay by finishing third last week at the World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championships and winning the Honda Classic one week prior. He tells John De Selby why the game in Asia is on the up.

If Rory Mcilroy is feeling the pressure of being golf’s hottest young property since Tiger Woods first emerged on the scene, he is not showing it. The 22-year-old has come a very long way in rather a short space of time – quite literally in the case of his participation in last October’s Shui On Land China Golf Challenge, a seven-day whistle-stop tour of seven Chinese golf courses, including Caesars in Macau, but also in terms of his own bigger picture.

Little over four years ago McIlroy was still an amateur. Now he’s the youngest winner of the US Open in almost a century and is currently being afforded all the fuss befitting that accomplishment, by sponsors, fans, media and tournament organisers alike.

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2011 was a good year for him, but it was not one that’s about to fizzle out quietly. And so one cannot but be struck by the diminutive Northern Irishman’s chirpiness, he’s spent hours shaking hands with various people in suits in the lobby of five-star hotels and charming inquisitors at packed media conferences. How’s that part of life among golf’s elite working out?

“Things have calmed down a little bit,” he insists. “The first tournament I played after winning the US Open was the British Open and I probably just wasn’t quite ready for the welcome I received, the attention, the hype and everything. Winning one of the majors at 22 – not a lot of golfers have done that. I think Seve [Ballesteros] won one at 22, as did Jack [Nicklaus], so that’s a nice bit of company. It does bring its own pressures and attention, but I feel as if I’ve adjusted to that now.”

Rory McIlroy in Asia

And the pressure keeps mounting: McIlroy played at the World Golf Championship in Shanghai, then at the World Cup of Golf at Mission Hills Haikou in Hainan – where he partnered McDowell – with more engagements in Dubai and Thailand afterwards.

“It’s important for the development of the game in Asia that there are now so many big tournaments,” he says. “In China, golf is going to become so big, partly because of its inclusion at the Olympics in 2016. The point of doing the China Golf Challenge was to help promote the game here, and for the outside world as well, to showcase what China has to offer in golf. There are some really fantastic courses.”

McIlroy says he’s pleased to see a growing number of events co-sanctioned by the European and Asian Tours. “You even see the PGA Tour now moving into Asia – they have a tournament in Malaysia and are trying to branch out in this market. Personally I love playing golf in this part of the world.”

Life on tour, he acknowledges, is not always conducive to letting down his considerable head of hair or sampling local cultures, but there is a sense that for all his determination to succeed on the golf course – he talks of becoming the best player in the world in the next three years – McIlroy is out to enjoy life along the way. Currently that involves making time for his girlfriend, the world No.4-ranked tennis player Caroline Wozniacki.

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And if he needs a pep talk from a fellow golfer, on the other hand, McIlroy need only turn to the greatest of them all. Jack Nicklaus, who went on to win 17 more majors after his first fresh-faced triumph in 1962, has invited him to spend the beginning of next year practicing at his club in Florida. McIlroy has already proven his lack of physical stature to be no hindrance to his game, but perhaps there is still something to be said for standing on the shoulders of giants.