3 days Ago By Irishexaminer.com
We still don’t get how big he is. We still don’t get how good he is. Rory McIlroy is not the first Irish golfer to win the last European tour event of the season to finish top of its order of merit.
Thirty-five years ago Ronan Rafferty pulled off the same feat, beating Nick Faldo by a shot back when the last tournament of the season was put on by the old money of Valderrama rather than all that oil money of Dubai. In 1989 Rafferty was about as good as a European golfer as there was, outside of Faldo himself who won his first US Masters that April. He won three tour events, had 15 top-10 finishes and minutes before Christy O’Connor Jnr’s immortal iron shot to the Belfry’s 18th, beat that year’s British Open winner Mark Calcavecchia in his singles Ryder Cup match.
But it was also as good as it got for Rafferty. The following season he rose to 16th in the world but by 1991 he’d fail to make the European Ryder Cup team and wouldn’t make another one in his career. McIlroy has already played in seven; next year, when he plays in his eighth, only Faldo, Westwood, Langer and Garcia will have played in more for Europe.
The number of years he has won the Race to Dubai is six; only Colin Montgomerie, on eight, has won more. And yes, his majors haul for 10 years now has been stuck on four. And yet Faldo and Seve are the only post-war Europeans to have won more.
Shane Lowry put it well after having a top-three finish himself in Dubai on Sunday. He noted that McIlroy “should have won the US Open, and he’d say that himself, but he didn’t”, but just because it wasn’t the year it could and should have been didn’t mean you could deem it a failure. “Unfortunately for Rory, I think everybody looks at [his] glass half-empty.
I look at it half-full. He’s had an amazingly consistent year. I’ve had a consistent year but he’s had consistent top-three finishes.
Mine are top 15s.” There are other facts and figures, ones outside of golf itself, that are testament to just how big a talent and name he is. Six months ago Forbes revealed the 100 current highest-earning athletes in world sport.
McIlroy was 19th, having brought in €80 million over the previous 12 months. The top-12 earners were all either soccer players or playing in the NBA, NFL or in the case of Jon Rahm, on LIV. Leave those sports and leagues out of it and only Canelo Alvarez and Anthony Joshua (boxing) and Max Verstappen (Formula 1) and the Japanese baseball sensation Shohei Ohtani had earned more than McIlroy.
What was interesting was that his income was almost equally divided between on-field earnings (€35m) and endorsements (€45m). Of the athletes listed ahead of him only Messi, Ronaldo, LeBron James, Steph Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Ohtani were bringing in more in off-the-field earnings. And of the athletes behind him, only Tiger Woods, with €55 million, commanded more in endorsements.
That’s the pantheon he is in. With all those one-name-only-required icons. Because he’s one himself: Rory.
One of the 10 most marketable stars in all of world sport. We’ve seen how money on that scale can corrode a sportsperson’s fire and desire. The only other Irish athletes to feature on that Forbes list are Eddie Irvine and Conor McGregor.
Whatever about having more than 15 minutes of fame, history shows they haven’t had anything approximating the 15 years of relevance and contention that McIlroy has had. Of course the burning question about McIlroy remains that he goes beyond mere contention and consistency: that he finally converts into championships, as in majors, like he used to routinely do in his mid-twenties. That’s why Dubai was so important.
It was almost incidental that he won the Henry Varden trophy yet again. What mattered was that he got to lift a tournament trophy again. That instead of spending this precious off-season dwelling on all his near-misses, he can replay in his mind of how he beat rather than lost to Rasmus Hojgaard down the stretch.
Lowry remarked on Sunday the fuel as well as confidence that should provide. “I think he is more determined than ever to come out firing next year,” he’d say, noting in particular the Masters and the Ryder Cup. He will hardly have as tumultuous a year as the one he has just had, one in which he came to the brink of finishing his marriage as well as his 10-year major duck.
But by surviving 2024, he is primed as much as any other player to be the golfer of 2025. And remain that sport’s and Irish sport’s most compelling personality and biggest star..
