iPing Aids
Stroke ( 6)
Spander:
Rory’s A Star ( 8)
Presidential
Match ( 25)
CONGRESSIONAL
RECORDS
He hasn’t yet figured out how to turn
water into wine. And to be sure, he is a
golfer, not a messiah.
But Rory McIlroy, our sport’s new savior-
in-waiting, has a swing that somehow makes
the prose written about it read like poetry.
It has meter. It scans.
It is a powerful but lyrical action, so
natural and free, that you swear trebles
and clefs fly from the ground along with
the divots produced from the scorched
earth when he strikes a long iron.
In the words of one golf teaching elder:
“At impact, all the boys in the band are
playing the same song at the same time.”
“It’s crazy, isn’t?” asked Steve Stricker.
No more so, really, than James Galway
with a flute, Ray Charles at the piano or
Andres Segovia on the guitar.
Fact is, it’s impossible not to want to
canonize the game of the 22-year-old
McIlroy after watching him break all those
records and shatter the U.S. Open sound
barrier last week.
But we must be careful to give him and
his gifts the space they need to grow.
His Congressional christening came not
a moment too soon. Tiger is ailing. Phil is
flailing. Jack is long past his prime. And
Seve is gone for good.
However, we have to understand that
Rory McIlroy “gets it” better than we do
right now. The Irish have a way of teaching
perspective to their young.
He is not stuck on himself.
And we must appreciate that as much as
we appreciate him.
Brian Hewitt
U.S. Open Champion
Rory McIlroy
