- Rory McIlroy equalled Seve Ballesteros to win his sixth Race To Dubai title
- It capped off a rollercoaster of a season for the four-time major winner
- The golfer has had to navigate a variety of challenges over the last 12 months
Rory McIlroy‘s emotional interview following his victory at the DP World Tour Championship on Sunday spoke levels of just how significant winning his sixth Race To Dubai title was.
‘It means a lot…’ the Northern Irishman said, pausing as he began to well up.
‘I’ve been through a lot this year. Professionally, personally; it feels like the fitting end to 2024.
‘I’ve persevered a lot this year. Had close calls, wasn’t able to get it done. So to be able to get it over the line… I got off to a great start and then I didn’t have my best round in the middle there.
He added: ‘So really pleased with the way I finished and thankfully I held on on a tough day and got the job done.’
It was his 27th start of the season and was perhaps a microcosm of his year. McIlroy had ups and downs on the Earth Course in Dubai this week, and like his season, he has enjoyed success but has had to battle through some tough moments.
‘Incredibly consistent again,’ McIlroy, who won his fourth tournament of the season on Sunday said, reflecting on his season. ‘I’ve been really proud of that over the past few years.
‘But then, at the same time, thinking about the ones [potential victories] that have got away – I should be sitting up here with a fifth major title and I’m not, so that stings and that’s something that I’ve had to come to terms with.
‘At the same time, I’ve got plenty more opportunities in the future.’
Rewind the tape back 10 years and McIlroy was ending 2014 with two major titles under his belt – the PGA Championship and the US Open.
The drought that has followed has been excruciating for the Northern Irishman. McIlroy has since come agonisingly close to winning his fifth major, even completing a career grand slam in 2022, and as he says, it will hurt him to walk away from this season without breaking that drought.
This year, McIlroy has had to battle several obstacles including issues with his swing, the anguish of his second-place finish at the US Open and problems in his private life.
He has also shocked fans by making a huge U-turn on his stance over LIV Golf and even weighed in on the US Presidential election debate. It’s been quite a year.
But the four-time major champion has plenty to be proud of. He admitted to Sky Sports that while he hadn’t reached the targets he had set himself, he walks away from the year having equalled Seve Ballesteros with his sixth Race To Dubai title.
When pressed on how he would grade his campaign, he added: ‘It would be a pass. It wouldn’t be a pass with flying colours. Probably an eight.’
It is hard to imagine the pressures that McIlroy has had to go through this season. He is European golf’s great statesman, the man who has done so much for the game over the years. He has taken flack for his stance on LIV and had to battle against the expectations we as fans hold him to.
Barring a few blips in form and some issues with his decision-making on course, this year he has been brilliant. But he has just fallen short of Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele and Bryson DeChambeau, who are bounding with confidence.
But the resilient and unrelenting Northern Irishman showed us once again this year that he is a fighter and will keep battling away to one day clinch his fifth major.
But that is not going to come easy.
From Jack Nicklaus to Seve Ballesteros, the greats of the game have all been judged on how they have fared in golf’s crowning events and McIlroy is no different, considering his achievements in the sport.
He has enjoyed a fantastic year, having now won four events on both the PGA and DP World Tours, while also placing second in five tournaments.
He began 2024 by securing an early victory at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic, and it had seemed that he could kick on from there. But his results at the majors would ultimately turn out to be a mixed bag.
In April, the 35-year-old bounced back from missing the cut at the Masters last year, to finish T22, again missing out on a coveted Green Jacket. A T12 finish at the PGA Championship would follow, after he had secured back-to-back wins at the Zurich Classic and the Wells Fargo Championship.
And despite the anguish of missing the cut at The Open, it is his second-place finish US Open in June that will linger in his memory as perhaps one of the most agonising results of his career.
The images of him with his head in his hands and his hat skewed on his head while he slumped over a table at Pinehurst watching Bryson DeChambeau steam ahead to victory were gut-wrenching to watch.
While no discredit to DeChambeau, a worthy and gallant winner on the day and one of the standout players of the season, the way that title slipped through McIlroy’s hands after he had missed a decisive putt on the final hole was tough to watch.
It did bring back memories of his second-place finish at the Masters in 2022. Perhaps the manner of his defeat was not as painful but with a career grand slam hanging in the balance, McIlroy was outdone by the brilliance of now two-time Masters winner, Scheffler.
With Scheffler, Schauffele and DeChambeau playing at the insane level they have been it will become harder for McIlroy to crack the majors.
Schauffele’s rise to win the PGA Championship and The Open this year, having been dubbed golf’s ‘nearly man’ for so long, has been incredible viewing. He will be a force to be reckoned with next season.
But even with the two American stars pulling ahead in the rankings, McIlroy is using their success as inspiration.
‘You’ve got two guys at the top of the world rankings, Xander winning two majors, Scottie winning a Masters, a Players and the Olympics, they certainly separated themselves from the pack this year,’ he told Sky Sports earlier this week.
‘I’m obviously very aware of that and it only makes me more motivated to try to emulate what they did this year.’
McIlroy, meanwhile, has also had to work through issues in his personal life in 2024.
He stunned the world after it was revealed he had filed for divorce from his wife of seven years, Erica Stoll, just days before the PGA Championship in May.
Stoll, 37, had previously worked with the PGA of America and is understood to have met McIlroy during the 2012 Ryder Cup.
She was working as a transport official at the time but their romance didn’t develop until 2014, with the Northern Irishman dating tennis player Caroline Wozniacki at the time.
The pair would go on to have a baby girl, Poppy, after getting married in 2017.
But earlier this year, the Northern Irishman had delivered a divorce summons to Erica at their home in Florida, with the documents asking for shared parental custody of their daughter.
Sources close to the couple claim that the news ‘came out of the blue’ and it had taken the golfing world by surprise.
The three-time FedEx Cup champion shocked the golfing world again after announcing in the week of the US Open that the pair had called off their divorce, with McIlroy stating their ‘best future was as a family together’.
After agonisingly collapsing on the last five holes of the US Open to concede defeat to DeChambeau, McIlroy announced he would be taking a sabbatical from golf, returning at the Genesis Scottish Open and Open Championship.
‘I think sometimes life can get a lot and it can get too much,’ McIlroy said, speaking about his personal issues this year in September.
‘There’s been a lot going on this year, golf-wise and then obviously personal wise as well. I had to take a little bit of a break and get away from the game more than anything else,’ he added.
‘Golf and the business of golf had become all-consuming for me for the last couple of years and I needed to take a bit of time away to realise what was actually important to me.
‘Friends, family, enjoying myself, enjoying the fact you were this little boy in Holywood and you’ve grown up to be whatever it is that I am and I need to enjoy that time.’
In recent months, McIlroy has been spotted enjoying a getaway in Portugal with his wife and daughter, while Stoll was seen supporting him at the Scottish Open earlier this year.
And things look like they’re back on track for the couple. After coming off the 18th green on Sunday, McIlroy headed over to the clubhouse where he would find his wife and daughter sat waiting for him following the victory. He embraced Poppy with a huge hug, before sharing a kiss with Stoll.
‘I have my family here this week, Erica, Poppy, I know you’re here somewhere. I love you and thanks for sticking by me and thank you for your support,’ he said during his trophy presentation.
‘I can’t wait to go to Ireland and celebrate this properly.’
Elsewhere, McIlroy has also shocked golfing fans this year for his decision to double back on his staunch opposition to the DP World Tour, the PGA Tour and LIV Golf’s bombshell merger.
In a way, McIlroy had the rug pulled from underneath him by the PGA Tour. His comments, claiming that he had felt like a ‘sacrificial lamb’ after having waged war with the likes of Greg Norman and other defectors, were telling of the mantle he has held in the LIV-PGA saga.
It was, though, rather shocking to see the Northern Irishman double back on his stance in February, softening his take on the Saudi-backed breakaway tour and admitted he had been ‘too judgemental’.
It came after Ryder Cup team-mates Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton both switched sides to join LIV, with McIlroy surprisingly claiming that unification was the way forward.
‘It would be much better being together and moving forward together for the good of the game. That’s my opinion of it,’ McIlroy said.
‘So to me, the faster that we can all get back together and start to play and start to have the strongest fields possible I think is great for golf.’
Players, including Sergio Garcia, who notably fell out with his good friend McIlroy over their disagreements on LIV Golf, have lauded the Northern Irishman for his change in stance.
‘I think it’s great,’ Garcia said. ‘I think at the end of the day it shows we’re all very emotional and we try to defend our positions and stuff like that, but at the end of the day, it shows we all want to go in the same direction and make golf better.
‘That’s the most important thing. Rory has seen that, he realises that trying to fight each other is not going to help anyone, and it’s definitely not going to help the game.’
McIlroy was also seen in October playing alongside LIV and PIF chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan during the Pro-Am event at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.
It was a telling moment, that seemingly confirmed the Northern Irishman was on board with the merger.
One thing that McIlroy has been candid on is that the deal needs to take place sooner rather than later.
And following this month’s US election results, the four-time major winner claimed that Donald Trump’s re-election could ‘clear the way’ for the peace deal to be settled.
He even suggested that Elon Musk could help push the deal forward.
‘He [Trump] has got Elon Musk, who I think is the smartest man in the world beside him, so he might be able to do something if we can get Musk involved too,’ he said.
‘But from the outside looking in I think it’s probably a little bit less complicated than it actually is, but obviously Trump has a great relationship with Saudi Arabia, he’s got a great relationship with golf, he’s a lover of golf, so maybe. Who knows?’
Capping off a whirlwind season
I wrote at the beginning of 2024 that McIlroy should be commended for his resilience after guiding Europe to Ryder Cup glory. And that statement holds true again this season.
Through all the difficulties that have been placed in his way, he has again shown his mettle, fight and courage to keep coming back time and time again.
This week, it was Rasmus Hojgaard who pushed him right to the end. The Norwegian a shot behind McIlroy, but could have usurped the Northern Irishman right on the 18th hole.
After a season that has included several close calls and some big misses, today McIlroy did not let the opportunity to win slip through his fingers.
But moving forward, McIlroy admitted that he is striving to meet the expectations that many fans have for him, but added he will reflect on 2024 with a smile.
‘Look, I want to live up to those standards too,’ he told Sky Sports earlier this week. ‘It’s not just everyone else. I fully expect to turn up to tournaments and have a chance to win every time.
‘I’m under no illusions that I’m not going to win every time. But you know, with how many chances I’ve given myself, especially this year, it feels like I probably should have won a couple more times.
‘But saying that, if I go on and have another three good days here and end the year with the win, I’ll look back on 2024 pretty fondly.’
