What Rory McIlroy's last ten years can teach us about belief
You don’t have to know, or care, about golf to learn something important from the career of Rory McIlroy.
It’s ten days now since one of the hardest days of Rory McIlroy’s life.
The Northern Irishman is, strangely, both the best golfer of his generation, and a player who hasn’t won a Major tournament in almost a decade.
His last Major tournament win came in the US PGA Championship at Valhalla in August 2014.
That’s 38 Major tournaments without a win. Twenty-six other golfers have won Majors in that that time. McIlroy finished in the Top 10 on 21 (TWENTY-ONE!) occasions in those 38 tournaments.
Since then he has won 17 tournaments, including the season-ending Tour Championship — effectively the PGA Tour’s champion player of the year — three times.
You don’t have to know, or care, about golf to learn something important from the career of Rory McIlroy.
Here’s the big thing about his career summed up in two bullet points:
When Rory McIlroy believes he’s going to win, he very often wins
When he doesn’t believe, he never wins
Take, for example, the Wells Fargo Championship, which takes place at the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina each May.
McIlroy has won the Wells Fargo on four occasions.
Rory is at home at Quail Hollow. He feels like he belongs there. When he’s at home and feels like he belongs, he often wins.
Take another example: the Dubai Desert Classic, which takes place in the United Arab Emirates each January or February.
He has also won the Desert Classic on four occasions between 2009 and 2024. Nor are these Rory’s only wins in Dubai: he’s also won the DP World (or European) Tour Championship in Dubai in 2012 and 2015.
Rory is at home in Dubai. He feels like he belongs there. When he’s at home and feels like he belongs, he often wins.
By almost all measures, McIlroy is the greatest player of his generation.
And yet when it comes to Majors — the tournaments that decide on true greatness, and legacy — Rory has fallen short for 10 years.
Those near misses have started to become more and more heartbreaking.
In 2022, in the 150th Open Championship at St Andrews, the home of golf in Scotland, Rory held a share of the lead going into the final round, four shots clear of the rest. But he missed seven birdie putts of 20 feet or less to finish third.
In 2023, he started the final round of the US Open at Los Angeles Country Club one behind Wyndham Clark and birdied the first hole to draw level, but then could manage just 16 pars and one bogey to lose by one.
And then 10 days ago, with just four of the 72 holes remaining, he led by two. He dropped shots at three of those last four holes — including missed putts of 2-foot-9-inches and 3-foot-6 — to lose by one. Again.
As Nick Faldo, the six-time Major winner, said on commentary when McIlroy missed his short putt at the 72nd:
“He just didn’t see it in the hole.”
Lots of what I write about here is about money. But it’s never about money for money’s sake. It’s about money as reward for value. It’s about our beliefs about money and reward. It’s about money as tool for a good life.
Rory McIlroy won more than $2.3 million for his efforts at the US Open.
But he will, and this is certain, believe that he has greatly underachieved, both there and in general over the past 10 years.
This is not a picture of someone who’s satisfied with his lot.
When Rory McIlroy believes, like he does in Dubai and North Carolina, he often wins.
When he doesn’t believe, he cannot win.
As Faldo says, hinting at Rory’s psychology, “he just didn’t see it in the hole”.
This is just a reminder, for all of us, that fostering a rock-solid belief in yourself is hard.
If it were easy, one of the most talented and richest sportsmen on the planet would have figured it out by now.
This is the work.
You, and I, and Rory McIlroy, have no option — at least no palatable option — but to keep showing up, to keep working, to keep chipping away at the countless challenges that can take the form of mountains in our mind.
Belief, true unshakable belief, is rare.
Maybe we’ll only get to fully believe in ourselves when all is done and dusted and some day, hopefully years from now, we find ourselves lying down in a bed we’ll never arise from.
Between now and then, let’s just keep showing up, one day at a time, and leave final judgment to the heavens.
Till next time.