LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In the immediate aftermath of what he’d just accomplished, the questions were coming at Rory McIlroy faster and more furiously than Phil Mickelson, Rickie Fowler and Henrik Stenson were Sunday afternoon at Valhalla, where he’d just captured the 96th PGA Championship.
At age 25, it was McIlroy’s second PGA Championship victory, but more importantly, it was his fourth career major championship. The way’s he’s been playing the last half-year, that would be four and counting. Counting fast.
So the natural next step in the social-media, let’s-get-ahead-of-ourselves world in which we live is to speculate on how many of these major championship trophies McIlroy will hoist before his career is over.
The benchmark, of course, is Jack Nicklaus’ 18. Tiger Woods famously has been “stuck’’ on 14 for going on seven years now, seemingly stalled in his very public pursuit of besting his idol, Jack.
So now it’s Rory’s turn. Fair or unfair, he is now on the clock.
One of the most refreshing characteristics to McIlroy is that he gets it. He understands exactly who he is, how he’s perceived and what’s expected from him and he embraces it. He has uncanny perspective — and always has — for someone so young.
As evidence of how much he’s learned from Woods, who was always the player he looked up to as a kid, McIlroy on Sunday took a very different approach to the one Woods took when he first burst onto the scene and began collecting major championships like kids used to collect baseball cards.
When it was over on Sunday at Valhalla and he was being flooded with questions about which records he was going to shatter next, McIlroy deftly delivered the proper reverence to both Nicklaus, who has become a grandfatherly figure to him, and Woods.
“I think I’ve got to take it one small step at a time,’’ McIlroy said. “The two next realistic goals are the career Grand Slam and trying to become the most successful European player ever. So Nick Faldo, [the] most successful European ever in the modern era, has six. Seve [Ballesteros] has five. Obviously, the career Grand Slam coming up at Augusta in eight months … they are the next goals. And hopefully, when I achieve those, I can start to think about other things.’’
Since he was growing up in Holywood, Northern Ireland, McIlroy always has been a keen observer of the way Woods went about his business. He observed how Woods went about winning majors and he learned some things. Along the way, he surely observed the tack Woods took in his public pursuit of Jack’s record.
And good for him. This more conservative, if plodding, approach he’s taking cannot help but serve him better than that of Woods, who set 18 as the end-all goal, such that anything short would mean failure. So often in golf, success is all about the approach, and McIlroy’s approach to setting and breaking records seems so much sounder than the one Woods took when he was younger.
Few in golf have known McIlroy as well as his fellow Northern Irishman (and de facto big brother of sorts) Graeme McDowell, and he was asked on Sunday how many career majors he thought McIlroy would collect.
“Eight,’’ McDowell said.
“It’s probably a little low,’’ McDowell went on. “I can’t look inside a guy and know what his number is, [but] not many people are born with the type of focus Tiger Woods had, [to] grow up with pictures of Jack Nicklaus on his wall and wanting to beat Jack’s record.
“Knowing Rory as I have the last few years, it didn’t seem to me like he was trying to beat Jack’s record. So it’s a case of how the guy continues to motivate himself. You don’t know what the number is. It’s however many he wants, you know?
“He’ll win as many majors as he wants — within reason.’’
Whether it is or isn’t premature to think about how deep he can take this, the run that he’s on absolutely warrants the conversation about whether the torch has been unofficially passed from Woods to McIlroy. To his credit, McIlroy understands this and, most impressively, he embraces it.
“You have to accept that to have a run of golf like I’ve had, it’s expected,’’ McIlroy said. “You have to welcome it. I don’t think you can see it as a burden. It’s a great place to be in. To be the face of golf or one of the faces of golf, it’s a big responsibility. But at the same time, I feel like I’m up to the task of handling it well. I definitely don’t have a problem with being one of the faces — or if not the — face of golf.’’