Rory McIlroy has become golf's new diva-in-chief

Telegraph

4 hours ago

The joy of Rory McIlroy is that he is unlike so many of the charmless androids populating professional golf, that he treats his craft with a passion and a sincerity impossible to fake. Where US Ryder Cup players strong-arm the PGA of America into paying them £370,000 each for deigning to turn up, he believes so fervently in the European cause that he ends up in tears. And where several of his former team-mates exclude themselves from future captaincy by accepting the Saudi bounty at LIV, he holds firm as the game's moral conscience, reminding his peers that money need not be their lodestar. In a sport that can seem awash with greed and entitlement, he so often brings a reminder of its soul.
All of which makes his behaviour since winning the Masters so difficult to accept. Out of nowhere, McIlroy has morphed into the diva-in-chief, hurling clubs, smashing tee-boxes, and treating America's national championship with such disdain that he claims to be unbothered about even making the cut. That is before we address him brushing off reporters after six consecutive rounds at majors, breaking this pattern only to give a few petulant remarks about 'frustration with you guys' and shrug that he has 'earned the right to do whatever I want'.
It is one of the strangest comedowns witnessed at this level. The diminished motivation that comes with scaling one's personal Everest is well-documented in sport: Nico Rosberg won his solitary Formula One world title in 2016 and promptly retired, exhausted by the psychological needle with Lewis Hamilton, while Pete Sampras lifted a then record 14th men's major singles title at the 2002 US Open and walked away, never to play a competitive tennis match again. The change in McIlroy, though, is something more troubling. It is not just his outlook that has shifted, but his personality, too. His behaviour during the US Open at Oakmont, just as at Quail Hollow for last month's US PGA, was cold, tetchy, hubristic, all traits antithetical to the compassionate character we are used to seeing.
More frustration from Rory McIlroy on the 17th 😬 pic.twitter.com/6U1SiuF6If
— Sky Sports Golf (@SkySportsGolf) June 13, 2025
Paul McGinley understands McIlroy better than most. He mentored him as Europe's captain in the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles, tellingly noting in the build-up: 'Rory's not arrogant.' But even he has been unsettled by McIlroy's latest conduct, alarmed by the distant and dismissive attitude on display. 'I didn't enjoy them,' McGinley said, in response to the off-hand answers McIlroy gave at Oakmont when he eventually decided to speak. 'I don't like to see that. Rory's better than that. He looks fed up to me, like he has had enough of everything. He's not himself. Something is eating at him. He hasn't let us know what it is, but there's something that's not right.'
The idea that it is just a natural cooling-off period, a reaction to the overwhelming emotional release of completing the career grand slam, does not quite hold water. McIlroy has savoured moments of profound catharsis before and soared immediately to even greater heights. His encore after lifting the Claret Jug at Hoylake in 2014? Winning a World Golf Championship in Akron a fortnight later, and a second US PGA at Valhalla the following week. This time, the upshot is not simply ragged golf – his recent nine-over-par total for 36 holes at the Canadian Open counted among the worst performances of his career – but a peculiarly contemptuous demeanour. You wondered, for example, what all the US Open volunteers felt when, asked what his hopes were for his final round, he shot back: 'Hopefully a round in under 4½ hours and get out of here.'
This mentality is hardly unusual in McIlroy's realm. The finest golfers are such a pampered breed that their entire existence consists of riding in courtesy limousines, staying at seven-star resorts, then firing up the private jets back to Florida. But there are reasons why McIlroy is held to a higher standard. For a start, he has long been unmoved by money: his father Gerry once told me he never had any cash on him, a claim later backed up by his admission that he had bought a huge mansion near the Bear's Club, Jack Nicklaus' Florida enclave, but only lived in four of its rooms. But it is also the fact that he has earned a reputation for sparing time for anybody. He reflected how, growing up, the memory of being snubbed for an autograph by Roy Keane had never left him. As such, he has tended to stay uncommonly long after range sessions to sign whatever a young fan thrusts in front of him.
Now, he is in the mood to disregard everyone. Never mind snubbing the press pack of late, he has even neglected his manners towards the great Nicklaus, skipping the Golden Bear's Memorial Tournament in Ohio and failing to give any advance notice. 'I didn't have a conversation with him,' Nicklaus said. And did that surprise him? 'A little bit.' You wonder if the time has come for him to offer McIlroy a pep talk. After all, Nicklaus made it his habit to talk with humility even on the rare occasions when his form deserted him. He also had zero tolerance of poor etiquette, recalling how tossing a club as a child had earned him ferocious dressing-down from his father. McIlroy threw not one club at Oakmont but two, while totalling a tee-box for good measure.
A sincere hope is that McIlroy rediscovers his irrepressible spirit soon, that he is energised by his imminent relocation to Wentworth with his wife Erica and their four-year-old daughter, Poppy. It is wise not to put anything past him: his abundance of talent is so vast that he could conjure a victory at this week's Travelers Championship in Connecticut, or even an Open triumph for the ages at Royal Portrush next month, in front of the people who remember the boy wonder who would become an icon. But as it stands, the evidence is undeniable: something is very wrong.