It has surely been one of the most bizarre years of Rory McIlroy’s career, with the Northern Irishman winning The Masters before enduring a real rut over much of the summer.
It is difficult to imagine that Rory McIlroy would have hesitated for a second had he been offered a victory at The Masters before 2025 began, even if it meant that he would struggle throughout the rest of the season.
As it happened, McIlroy was brilliant in the opening weeks of the year on the PGA Tour. So when he won his green jacket, it felt as if the floodgates could really open. However, that has not been the case so far.
McIlroy has struggled for form in recent months, and ended up receiving a lot of criticism after not speaking to the media after the majority of his rounds across the PGA Championship and the US Open.
Billy Horschel asked what Rory McIlroy’s biggest strength is
McIlroy was frustrated that news that his driver had failed testing at Quail Hollow had leaked out. The 36-year-old’s name was the only one which was reported initially.
His actions at the US Open were disappointing, with McIlroy throwing clubs and breaking tee markers at Oakmont. But Billy Horschel has come to the defence of the five-time major champion.
Horschel was asked on Five Clubs about McIlroy’s greatest strength, and he suggested that he has done a fantastic job of being an ambassador for the game throughout his career.
“I could talk a lot about Rory because obviously, we’re similar in age and I’ve seen so much of him. Played against him so much and seen how he’s grown as a player, as a person and everything. I know he’s got a lot of slack lately for not talking to the media a little bit, but I think that his ability to embrace everything that he’s had to deal with over the last 10 or 15 years of his career, there’s not a more scrutinised player I believe in the game of golf since Tiger Woods,” he said.
“Rory’s been that guy, he’s been the one who’s led the PGA Tour, has been the show pony, the person that everyone looks to to talk, that has all the expectations of what they expect for him to do in the game and to achieve. I think winning The Masters, as we all saw, was such a massive relief and a weight off his shoulders that I think it’s right that he was sort of lost a little bit. You had this goal of wanting to be a Grand Slam winner, winning The Masters and etching a name alongside five other players, and you’re going to have a little bit of a down.
“And I think he’s recharging, you saw last week he played well at Renaissance. Chris Gotterup played unbelievable there to win it. But I think he always has the motivation, finds the motivation, finds something to spark his desire again, and I think you can see that he’s found that again, and he has a new goal – we don’t know what that goal is. Obviously, he’s talking about winning at Portrush, so maybe that is his goal, to win The Open Championship at Portrush, but I think the way he’s dealt with everything that has come up in his career over the last 15 years, like I said, being the most scrutinised player, I think that’s something that’s not given a fair share of weight to.”
What Billy Horschel thought when he faced Rory McIlroy for the first time back in 2007
Horschel and McIlroy’s relationship goes back nearly two decades. The pair were on opposing teams during the 2007 Walker Cup, which USA ended up winning by just one point.
The pair actually faced off in three of the four sessions, with each man winning one singles match against the other. And speaking on Fried Egg Golf this past week, Horschel explained what his first impressions of McIlroy were.
“I got paired up with Rory in the Sunday afternoon singles. We get up on the first tee, and I hit a good drive and he just unleashes on one, and it goes so far. And he’s way down there, he can’t have more than seven or eight iron into the green, and he hits an iron shot in there to about 15 feet. I’ve got like seven feet for birdie, and he makes his eagle putt and he yelled at the top of his lungs, ‘f— yeah, let’s go’, something like that. And I go, ‘oh s—, I’m in trouble’,” he said.
“We didn’t know who Rory was. We knew he won low am at The Open Championship at Carnoustie in ’07. We knew he was a good player, but he didn’t come to the States and play. He was only 18 at the time. There was a lot of hype around him and everything. We all thought he was good. I couldn’t have told you what was going to happen. I saw potential, I saw talent, but yeah, at the time, I just thought he was another player we were trying to beat. He showed me something on that Sunday afternoon singles that I walked away and I was impressed and I respected the hell out of him.”
Horschel’s comments highlight that McIlroy has been one of the sport’s biggest names for the best part of 20 years now. It was inevitable that he was going to have some spells where he did not cover himself in glory.
With that, perhaps he does indeed deserve some leeway.
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