Big mental hurdle now for Rory. I think Rose has it with that putt.
Big mental hurdle now for Rory. I think Rose has it with that putt.
Some finish, this. 7 for immortality. 8 for another shot. 9 and he fucks it.
Immortality beckons.
He needs to hit every shot with that 7 iron.
Bryson shitting his way round can't be helping with all the tension.
Now make the putt you Irish wanker.
Now how's your bottle Rory? Come on lad.
The fuck is Aberg doing?
Got money on rose, evidently
Can't just be easy can it.
He cannot help himself. Excruciating.
The Langer putt.
I nearly posted about twenty minutes ago "this is totally going to a playoff isn't it " but obviously didn't bother cus it actually ended up being right
He's got to feel sick.
He genuinely should have won this by 10. The best player out there by a mile. Just cannot stop falling over himself.
The putt wasn’t even close. Embarrassing
It's any time he tries to play safe he fucks it up. Whenever he goes for it aggressively, he hits things like the irons earlier on.
Was he always this prone to self destruction? Is he like this in non-majors? I've not willingly watched more than about half an hour of anything but the big four and the Ryder cup in my life.
Thank god, delighted for him.
Deserved it for this shot alone.
Ludicrous.
Fucking hell. That was torture, like watching Man United trying to win a game. Makes sense Rory is a fan of that team. At least he got over the line. Fair play.
Last edited by AJ23; 14-04-2025 at 03:41 AM.
Had to go to bed so couldn't watch the play off.
Thank god.
Poor old 'Rosie' always the defeated villain in the wider narrative. He deserves a green jacket at some point.
I look forward to the extrapolators working out exactly when McIlroy will break Nicklaus' majors record.
Rose did great on Sunday but McIlroy was so by far and away the best player in that tournament. Four spaz double bogeys across the week and still won it.
I wonder how he'll go now the monkey is off his back.
PGA Championship - at Quail Hollow where he has the course record and has won four times.
US Open - top 10 last six years, including 2nd in the last two.
Open - at his home course.
Big opportunity for him to kick on.
You've got to feel a bit for Rose. 3rd time as a runner up there now and the entire course willing your opponent to win. Still the only reason he was into the play off was McIlroy self destructing.
You could see the outpouring of relief on Rory though. He always seems to be there or there abouts with Majors. I believe he has 14, top 5 finishes along with his 5 wins. Maybe now he has the freedom to kick on.
I think he could kick on from here.
I'd be surprised if he doesn't at least contend for the next two. Portrush might be harder work, pressure and expectation back on him there.
The difference yesterday was that he can hit ludicrous iron shots high over/around obstacles. He made a lot of mental errors under pressure which for many (see Norman 1996) would have led to a round in the high 70s, but he has access to these ludicrous shots like those on 7, 15 and 17 which nobody else has, and they just about made up for the complete crock of shit that he served up with the wedge.
He's still not the greatest wind player and he isn't unflappable like Scheffler, but as a fan that only adds to the appeal really.
I wouldn't call Scheffler unflappable.
In a golfing sense he is. Never makes mental errors.
Who is the golf GOAT? Tiger Woods? Nicklaus? Or is there some sort of modern Ronaldo/Messi figure?
It's either Woods or Nicklaus. Nicklaus has a better record on paper, but Woods did his against better opposition, and also had a far greater cultural/commercial impact, so it's debatable. I'd probably marginally side with Nicklaus but many wouldn't.
The reason they earn such inflated money is that Tiger Woods caused every corporate in America to rush to pump money into the sport in a Jordan-esque way (but with less shame as golf is a far more shareholder-friendly sport than basketball) and it's never gone away, now only exacerbated further by the Saudi effect. It's also a sport whose internal culture is dominated by remarkably entitled rich brats from the southern states who genuinely think they deserve a six figure prize for finishing 8th at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. It will crash at some point.
I thought that Tiger had smashed all records. He definitely came into the scene at the perfect time to get that Jordan style explosion.
I've never played golf but maybe I should watch sometime to see what all the fuss is about.
At its best (like Sunday), it's one of the most dramatic spectacles of sporting theatre that you can get.
A lot of the time it's extremely pedestrian, and is also run in an incredibly arcane way aimed at maximising the earnings of players 50-300 in the world at the expense of making the sport compelling outside the majors and Ryder Cup.
Does many people actually watch days one, two or three?
At majors, absolutely. At run of the mill tournaments, less so unless you're a die hard or want some nice moving wallpaper.
I watched most of Day 3.
Day 1 and 2 was more in and out as I was at work and/or did other things.
Golf is a bit like cricket in that it can generally be in the background punctuated by moments of great excitement / tension.
I'm not really sure how accessible it is or how you go about 'getting into it' though [applies to both golf and cricket] if you are an outsider. You almost need to be brought up in it for it not to be bafflingly boring.
Both of them (and baseball) are long build up to short climax type sports. These are basically made for me. The opposite would be something like tennis or American football or basketball, where the action happens repeatedly and predictably across the course of the game, I can't be doing with that at all.
Football can be either, I guess.
I get too fucked off with the amount of ads and waffle to ever stay with it, even on day 4.
I like cycling so I figure golf might have a similar pace.
Much like golf and cricket, and possibly moreso, cycling needs a lot of effort or actual interest to understand or get into. Even understanding the vagueries of a breakaway or how day races are entirely different from stages in stage races is confusing - ie people often look at the Olympic road race and try to understand it in terms of stage race stages, but sometimes a bunch of strong riders who would never normally get away end up in a break and they can't be caught.
The Grand Tours have a lot of filler days. On the important days it is a great watch, but on a random sprinter day in week one, it is rarely worth bothering with.
The one that always sticks in my mind with cycling is the women's road race in Tokyo (I think), in which an unknown Austrian decided to just have a crack early on and was never caught. I'm surprised they haven't sports-scienced the peloton so that breakaways are impossible.