Defending Rory McIlroy

I don't pretend to be a huge golf fan. Most of what I know about golf has to do with Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, and that Arnold Palmer makes some damed good iced tea. Trying to be an interested sports fan, I was watching the final round of the 2011 U.S. Open and I changed channels after about five minutes. One of the main reasons was because Rory McIlroy had all but secured the title after the third round, making the fourth round a mere formality. But the main reason is because watching golf on television, for me, is absolutely pointless. Back to McIlroy....

The guy is 22 years old and already has a major championship to his name. By comparison, Phil Mickelson didn't win his first major until he was 33, Greg Norman was 31, Fred Couples was 32. Nicklaus was 22 when he won his first major, and we all know how that played out. I'm not comparing McIlroy to Nicklaus, but what McIlroy did was fantastic. Still, many golfers criticized the course for being too "soft." Which means that golfers escaped trouble when a ball strayed off the fairway, and the greens kept the balls on the green instead of rolling them back into the rough or into bunkers. The result was that a whopping 20 golfers finished with scores under par.

The critics have said that at the end of the day McIlroy's name will go on the trophy, but it was a soft Open that didn't demand much from its participants. The golf experts pointed to statistics about how historically soft the course was (Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, MD), and how it wasn't a mentally challenging and demanding course like most courses are. They say McIlroy is champion, but his is a watered-down championship.

Excuse me, come again? This 22-year-old guy shot a -16 and led from wire-to-wire, the second-best golfer was at -8. In other words, while the course may have been soft, he destroyed the field. McIlroy dominated the course in Tiger-esque fashion. Secondly, look at the list of golfers that finished above par and you'll see that a number of very good players struggled with this "soft" course, including Mickelson (+7), Rory Sabbatini (+1), Zach Johnson (+2), Martin Kaymer (+3), and number-one ranked Luke Donald (+5). Aaron Baddeley, the 15th ranked player in the world, didn't even make the cut. K.J. Choi, ranked 2nd in the world, also failed to make the cut.

Golf is a funny game when even the best players fail to make the cut. I wish I could tell all these golf experts to give credit where credit's due. Perhaps the golfing establishment is jealous that such a young guy won a major championship, who knows. Let's just quit coming up with excuses for why what McIlroy did wasn't great. The fact is he crushed a loaded field in one of the four biggest tournaments of the year, that alone speaks for itself.