I didn’t know how to feel, all I know is that Rory McIlroy winning the Masters and the Career Grand Slam didn’t feel like I thought it would feel.
To paraphrase Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses, the chase was the fun part, waking up on a Thursday four times a year for the last eleven years ready to get my heart broken again.
McIlroy found new ways to suck the life out of me especially over the last few years, but part of the thrill was picking myself up off the floor and emotionally preparing myself to go again – and to send the defiant texts to those who doubted him.
Now what do I do? Liverpool won the league in 2020, Rory has completed golf. What’s next, Meath beating the Dubs in two weeks time? The last time that happened I wasn’t there and I won’t be this time around so chances are it probably will.
Yes I was supposed to be at the Masters but no I did not get to go. It’s a long story but as I sat in a room in US Pre-Clearance in Dublin Airport waiting for an officer to break the bad news that I knew was coming, I knew then that Rory would get the job done.
I hadn’t allowed myself to get excited about going until I dropped my bags at the check in, within minutes my dream was shattered. Pure devastation. Worse than any break up. I can always go back to the young one but seeing Rory win the grand slam is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Instead of Amen Corner on Friday it was Tolka Park for me. Not even some box office Damien Duff content could take away the sting.
“You can see what your main priority is,” said one of the lads in the press box as I stared at the action at Augusta via the Sky Go on my laptop after he had offered his condolences.
It’s not that I was rooting against Rory, but compared to the US Open ten months ago when I celebrated every good shot or every holed putt like Ireland had scored a goal, this was a very tepid viewing experience.
The quiet fist pump, the odd ‘come on’ but when he tried on several occasions to throw the Masters away with four double bogeys across the four days I was banging tables, slamming couches, the lot. I still cared more than most.
In fact, I was sitting in the living room on my own last night watching the action unfold, again, not knowing how I should be feeling until Rory chunked a wedge into the water on 13. I let out any expletive I could think of and my housemate came running down the stairs, knowing that something terrible had happened, not to me, but to Rory.
From there it was another two hours of excruciating yet thrilling viewing for me and my newfound clann.
McIlroy won four majors between 2011 and 2014 but his popularity had never been as high during that time as it has become over the last five years. Everybody knows the story and everybody was invested.
I was as nervous as anybody, head in hands throughout, but the feeling of euphoria and outpouring of emotion that I should have had at near 1am last night never came.
Perhaps it was the FOMO or the ROMO (realisation of missing out) that stopped me from crying. God my housemates have seen me hopping around the living room watching various matches this year, they’ve also seen me collapse into the couch in despair.
Yet when McIlroy held the winning putt on the 73rd they looked at me, expecting an outpouring of euphoria and maybe even a few laps of the gaf. I didn’t look at them but out of the corner of my eye I could see their surprise at my muteness but they knew why.
I was caught between two stools, this was the dream as a golf fan but on the other side of the coin it was my worst nightmare.
History was made on Sunday night, in circumstances that will maybe never be seen again. Eleven years of pent up anger, fear, frustration and desperation came through in 18 hectic holes of golf from McIlroy and one more for good measure and I missed it.
A week of devastation, queasiness, regret, relief and delight is over. If you can’t be happy for yourself then be happy for Rory McIlroy.
McIlroy is the most human of all sportspeople which is why it has been so easy for him to whisk you along for the ride over the last decade or so. What McIlroy gives you in one day is more than what some of the greats of sport will give you in a career.
Every inch of what he has gone through mentally since 2014 and since the fateful day in 2011 was there for all to see on Sunday which is why I am made up for my colleagues, whose ages I won’t reveal, but let’s just say they have soldiered along filling column spaces about near miss after near miss, so I hope they enjoyed a long and hard earned bevvies.
A shoutout has to go to the communications team at Augusta National who were very understanding throughout the whole situation as I tried and tried and tried again, all in vain to get there.
I will next year and I know it will be worth it.
For now, it’s time to dust myself down and emotionally over invest myself in Meath beating the dirty Dubs, Ireland qualifying for the World Cup and a first European Ryder Cup win on away soil since 2012.
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