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THERE ARE MEANS of seeking relief in golf without turning to a rules official.
For Rory McIlroy, his has usually been to make a trip to Charlotte and turn down Gleneagles Road to Quail Hollow Golf Club.
It was here in 2010 that McIlroy underlined his arrival on the PGA Tour, winning his first title to a delightful Jim Nantz flourish from the commentary booth.
Welcome to the big time, Rory McIlroy!
That victory made him the youngest winner on the PGA Tour since Tiger Woods, and he did it in characteristically stomach-swooping fashion. He eagled the 16th hole on Friday to make the cut right on the number, before he set a course-record 62 on Sunday to sprint home to a four-shot win.
That course record stood for five years until McIlroy took a further shot off it on Saturday en route to a seven-shot victory, still the largest winning margin in the history of the oft-renamed Quail Hollow Championship.
The place has also been a balm in troubled times.
McIlroy arrived here in May 2021 amid what qualifies as a slough in form by his heady standards. Without a win since November 2019, McIlroy had dropped to 15th in the world – his lowest ranking in 12 years – and was suffering from a familiar ailment known as an over-exposure to Bryson DeChambeau.
DeChambeau was then in full Hulk mode, and McIlroy lost his swing as he was spending too much time trying to match Bryson for ball speed. But having missed the cut at the Players Championship and the Masters, McIlroy slipped into the familiar Quail Hollow embrace and found himself two shots clear of Abraham Ancer standing on the 72nd tee.
And such are the blissful effects of Quail Hollow, the place even lulled McIlroy into listening to his caddie. When McIlroy went out of position off the tee, his genius tendencies left him considering a wildly risky rescue shot before being talked down from the ledge by Harry Diamond, who instead told him to take a penalty drop and sign for a tournament-clinching bogey. Diamond won the argument. . . and McIlroy won the tournament.
McIlroy signed off by describing Quail Hollow as one of his favourite places in the world. Diamond presumably agreed.
There followed another win here last year, putting his foot on Xander Schauffele’s throat with a storming Sunday finish to win by five shots. Schauffele went on to win two of the year’s remaining three majors.
Away from the victories, stats guru Justin Ray crunched the numbers for the best cumulative score to par at Quail Hollow since McIlroy debuted in 2010. McIlroy is 102-under across 50 rounds, with Rickie Fowler the next closest on -47, followed by Phil Mickelson on -44.
Though McIlroy didn’t defend his latest Wells Fargo title last week, he said he didn’t feel like he was defending it either. Hosting the PGA Championship this week left the Tour event dereacinated, and so it popped up in Philadelphia instead.
Hence McIlroy says this week feels more like a title defence instead. While not strictly true, there is a sense that McIlroy’s at least playing with what the Americans would call home field advantage.
His snug course fit here is summed up by Brooks Koepka’s description of Quail Hollow as a “bombers’ paradise.”
Only Aldrich Potgieter and Niklas Norgaard are driving the ball further than McIlroy on the PGA Tour this year, and while the equivalent stats on LIV are patchy and unreliable, we have enough evidence at this point to say only really DeChambeau can live with McIlroy off the tee.
McIlroy’s power game thus gives him the muscle to wrestle the course into submission. Quail Hollow’s primary defences are firm greens and, this week, thickened rough mowed back in the direction of the tee. McIlroy’s distance gives him greater control when attacking those greens, while he has greater power than most to punch out of that rough.
These are merely the blatant advantages as the course, in golferspeak, fits his eye.
It is built for his signature right-to-left draw, and while McIlroy was extremely inaccurate off the tee in Philadelphia – finding only eight fairways across the closing two rounds - he attributed this at least partly to the lack of architecture around the Philadelphia course. He feels more comfortable when he has targets, he explained, be they grandstands, TV towers, or great big advertising logos, which he has always found easily around Quail Hollow.
“I would argue he’s the best driver of the ball I’ve ever seen, and that is extremely important here,” said Justin Thomas when asked as to why the course suits McIlroy so well. “But I think his shot shape, I think this golf course fits a high draw really, really well.
That’s a tremendous advantage or threat at any golf course, but I feel like a place like this, where it doesn’t necessarily require a lot of thought or strategy off the tee, it’s generally pulling out driver and just I need to hit this as far and straight as possible, and he’s really, really good at that.”
Thomas won the 2017 PGA Championship when it was last held at Quail Hollow, at which McIlroy finished in a tie for 22nd place that was mitigated by a rib injury. Ahead of that event, he said he didn’t have anything left to prove, as questions began to accrete about a major drought then in its third year.
Nobody quite expected they were asking those questions in merely the prelude part of The Great Longing.
The drought was adrenally at the Masters last month, which McIlroy says has freed him up and he is now, in his own words, playing in majors with house money.
“I’m a little scared of what it could do for him moving forward”, says Canadian golfer Adam Hadwin.
“To get through that, now he knows how to and I wouldn’t be shocked to see him roll off two or three more Masters in the next five years. I also wouldn’t be shocked to see him go for a grand slam in one year.”
A Rory Slam really is an absurd ambition, though his comfort at Quail Hollow has bred the chatter. McIlroy has proven he can win around Quail Hollow beneath all weather and in all moods, and with the major millstone finally left shattered and in dust at Augusta, the stars are present and ready to be pushed into line.
Written by Gavin Cooney and originally published on The 42 whose award-winning team produces original content that you won’t find anywhere else: on GAA, League of Ireland, women’s sport and boxing, as well as our game-changing rugby coverage, all with an Irish eye. Subscribe here.
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