‘That one got me' – Rory McIlroy reveals hilarious Elton John exchange after winning The Masters
RORY McIlroy was congratulated by a wide array of celebs after his Masters triumph - but one stunned him more than any other.
While appearing on
3
He came dressed for the occasion in his Green Jacket
Credit: @FallonTonight
3
The historic moment he finally completed the career grand slam
Credit: AP
3
It turns out the English music icon is a keen fan
Credit: AFP
He recalled their interaction, or at least, as close as they've had to one so far.
The Down native laughed: "I was sort of overwhelmed with the people that reached out from all different walks of life.
"But the one that got me was Sir Elton John. That was incredible.
"I actually haven't been able to connect with him though.
Read More On Irish Sport
"So his assistant left me a voicemail and said 'Sir Elton would love to congratulate you in person. The only problem is...he doesn't have a cellphone! So you might get a call from a number in Windsor, England off a landline.'
"But I was like 'Sure! That's absolutely fine! We haven't been able to connect yet but I'd love to get to chat to him.
"I just think that's so cool. Like, it's Elton John! I didn't even know that Elton John cared about golf."
Another light-hearted moment from the interview came when they discussed Rory's daughter stealing the show at Augusta's curtain raiser
Most read in Golf
The proud dad informed Fallon and viewers that Poppy had been "a little surprised" by how loud the cheer she received was and ended up crying a little.
But when they retreated back to their accommodation and watched her incredibly light touch back on the TV, she was simply relieved that no one had seemed to notice her tears.
UK Government Pushes for Trump Turnberry to Host The Open to Woo President
The 35-year-old also shared that pal Shane Lowry was acting as babysitter in order to allow him to appear on Fallon's programme.
The now five-time major champion will next be back on our screens in his usual guise when the Truist Championship - previously known as the Wells Fargo Championship - tees off on May 8.
SCOTTISH SELECTION
Earlier this week
The 2025 season still has three majors to play with the
He will be aiming to bag his second Claret jug, which would surely have extra significance coming on home soil compared to his 2014 win at Royal Liverpool.
Speaking on the announcement of his participation at the Scottish Open which falls a week before the Open, McIlroy said: "Winning a national open is always special.
"And I'm pleased to have the chance to compete for another Genesis Scottish Open title.
"It has certainly been a memorable year so far, and I'm looking forward to carrying on the momentum to the home of golf this summer."
He bagged the PGA Tour and DP World Tour co-event in 2023 at the Renaissance Club - host venue of this year's edition.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Examiner
2 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Book review: Light touch always present in a story that is about love, pure and simple
Seán Hewitt's debut novel Open, Heaven is a queer coming-of-age novel set in a northern English village in 2002. Hewitt conveys the emotional intensity of late childhood and adolescence so well. The teeming excitement at your sexuality ascertaining itself, the uncertainty of launching yourself forward as an individual, of wondering what the shape of you might be. We first encounter James returning to the village where he grew up, considering buying an old farmhouse. As he looks around, he is brought back to a formative summer. Surely, we all have one. 'Time runs faster backwards. The years-long, arduous, and uncertain when taken by one, unspool quickly, turning liquid, so one summer becomes a shimmering light that, almost as soon as it appears in the mind is subsumed into a dark winter, a relapse of blackness that flashes to reveal a face, a fireside, a snow-encrusted garden.' This novel reminds me of Edmund White's iconic A Boy's Own Story in that both protagonists look back and explore the loneliness of queer adolescence, the feeling of being outside the swim. Yet, most of us can identify with that early grappling for identity. The wanting to be wanted. 'I could smell the heat off him, could almost taste him in my mouth. I was trapped there, part resentment, part pure pleasure, so close to him, so close to his power, that for a split second I thought perhaps he wanted me to kiss him.' Open, Heaven is a more innocent book than White's A Boy's Own Story. Sixteen-year-old James is a gentle, shy boy who loves his family, yet he often feels smothered by them. Hewitt draws the son's attempt to break away from the mother figure particularly well, his stiffening in public when she embraces him. In White's novel he viscerally charts the self-loathing of the queer boy who in the 1950s wanted to be loved by men and to love them back but not to be 'homosexual'. James in Open, Heaven does not share that fear, and there is a limited measure of societal progress. James comes out to a family who are gently supportive, although the attitude of his schoolmates remains challenging. While the self-loathing is happily absent, there is still that sense of being cut loose and alone. He is effectively ostracised because of the outside world's persistent homophobia. James must navigate his queerness in a predominantly straight world. Into his life comes gorgeous Luke, who becomes the lightning rod for his desires. Luke's sexuality remains ambiguous. James brings him a page from a porn magazine hoping that Luke might think of him as a girl. Luke is a troubled magnetic boy with an absent mother and a father in prison. Adults perceive him as a troublemaker. And so, we see two outsiders draw close. The backdrop to the book is, if not economic deprivation, quiet rural poverty and the struggle to make a living. It occurs to James that his family may not be able to afford to turn on the heating, and he faces a two-hour walk to school. The novel is not laden down by plot. I personally enjoyed the focus on the interiority of the protagonist's life. A profoundly moving bond forms between the boys. The ending had me almost reaching for a tissue because it is about love, plain and simple. This is never a dark book because the light touch is always there, and it is the better for it. How exhausting it must be for queer adolescents to so often see themselves depicted on the page as only tortured and struggling. Hewitt's debut poetry collection, Tongues of Fire, was published in 2020 to much fanfare. Since then, he has produced a book a year. He is also an assistant professor in literary practice at Trinity College Dublin and a darling of the critics. Born in England to an Irish mother and an English father, his sensibility feels midway between both cultures. Open, Heaven is written with lyrical delicacy, featuring beautiful Hardyesque descriptions of nature with an intimate tone. Hewitt is a poet at heart, and it leaps from the page. 'And then across the village, there came the high metallic notes of the church bells pealing, as if the sound, as if time itself, were being pulled upwards, brightly, into the sky.' I couldn't recommend it more.
Irish Independent
3 hours ago
- Irish Independent
Rory McIlroy admits ‘concern' for US Open as he crashes to 78 to miss Canadian Open cut
The Masters champion hit just four fairways at TPC Toronto and shot his highest score since opening with a 78 en route to missing the weekend in last year's Open at Royal Troon. "Yeah, of course it concerns me," McIlroy said after his first missed cut since the final Major of the season last July. "You don't want to shoot high scores like the one I did today. "Still, I felt like I came here obviously with a new driver thinking that that was going to be good and solve some of the problems off the tee, but it didn't. "Obviously, going to Oakmont next week, what you need to do more than anything else there is hit fairways. Still searching for the missing piece off the tee. "Obviously, for me, when I get that part of the game clicking, then everything falls into place for me. Right now that isn't. Yeah, that's a concern going into next week." McIlroy had his preferred driver ruled non-conforming at last month's PGA Championship and struggled from the tee there, finishing 14 shots behind winner Scottie Scheffler in joint 47th. He opted for the new TaylorMade model this week but again struggled from the tee en route to missing the cut by a whopping 11 shots. The Holywood star knew he needed to shoot in the 60s to make the cut after opening with a one-over 71. But his hopes evaporated early when he tugged his second out of bounds playing with a wedge from the rough at the 447-yard fifth and ran up a quadruple bogey eight. Further bogeys followed at the eighth and 10th before he blocked his tee shot into a pond at the 197-yard 11th and made a double-bogey five, then dropped another shot at the 13th, where he drove miles left behind a tree. He made his first birdie of the day at the 15th but bogeyed the 17th before finishing with a birdie four. "I think there's still learnings that you have to take from a day like today," said McIlroy, who found just four fairways, two on each nine. "Even though the last two days didn't go the way I wanted them to, there are still things that I can take from it, and there are still things that I can learn. "I'm gonna have to do a lot of practice and a lot of work over the weekend at home to try to at least have a better idea of where my game is going into next week." He has a decision to make about his driver before taking on Oakmont's punishing rough, as eight of his ten misses in round two were to the right. "I didn't hit enough fairways," he said. "I felt like I drove the ball a bit better yesterday than I did today. "I think once I made that big number on the front nine, I was always behind the eight ball a little. And then, after nine holes, I'd sort of resigned myself to the fact that I'd be flying home to Florida tonight. "It was just about trying to make a few good swings, seeing where the misses were, and you're trying to sort of learn as much as I could, just looking ahead to next week." On the driver, he added: "So I went back to a 44-inch driver this week to try to get something that was a little more in control and could try to get something a bit more in play. "But if I'm going to miss fairways, I'd rather have the ball speed and miss the fairway than not. "I said to Harry going down the last, this is obviously the second time this year I've tried the new version [of driver], and it hasn't quite worked out for me. "So I'd say I'll be testing quite a few drivers over the weekend." It was a better day for Shane Lowry, who shot a two-under 68 to go into the weekend tied for seventh, just four shots behind Cameron Champ on eight-under. Champ shot 66 to lead by two shots on 12-under from Andrew Putnam, who shot a best-of-the-day 62.
Irish Examiner
4 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Rory McIlroy has 'concerns' as he misses Canadian Open cut by country mile
Rory McIlroy's US Open preparations went spectacularly awry as yet another happy hunting ground turned on him in vicious fashion, the Masters champion missing the cut by a country mile in a Friday horror show at the RBC Canadian Open. Twice a winner in Toronto, McIlroy purred midweek about how this tournament has served as such a reliable springboard to the year's third major in recent years. The 2025 edition didn't follow suit in any way, shape or form, instead ejecting him out at the halfway mark as he missed a cut in North America for the first time in over two years. McIlroy admitted he'll be leaving with deep concerns, particularly after a driver change didn't go according to plan at all. 'Of course it concerns me. You don't want to shoot high scores like the one I did today,' said a visibly frustrated McIlroy. 'I felt like I came here obviously with a new driver thinking that that was going to be good and solve some of the problems off the tee, but it didn't. 'Obviously going to Oakmont next week, what you need to do more than anything else there is hit fairways. I'm still searching for the sort of missing piece off the tee. Obviously for me, when I get that part of the game clicking, then everything falls into place for me. Right now that isn't. Yeah, that's a concern going into next week.' Needing a second-round revival after a sluggish opener at TPC Toronto, McIlroy instead plumbed the depths with an utterly woeful 8-over 78, low-lighted by a quadruple bogey eight. Somehow, it could have been worse, a couple of late birdies saving him from finishing double digits over par. To blame it all on the bedding-in period for his new TaylorMade driver would be to ignore all the other parts of his game which coughed and spluttered. He left the course on 9-over with just three others in the 153-strong field below him. With the notoriously challenging Oakmont hosting next week's US Open, there's a laundry list of work-ons. 'I think there's still learnings that you have to take from a day like today. Look, even though the last two days didn't go the way I wanted them to, there's still things that I can take from it, and there's still things that I can learn,' he insisted. 'I'm going to have to do a lot of practice and a lot of work over the weekend at home and try to at least have a better idea of where my game is going into next week." How disorienting this must all feel, mere weeks removed from his drought-breaking, career grand slam-clinching victory at Augusta in April. In truth, it looks as though McIlroy hasn't yet figured out what golf will look like now that he achieved his holy grail. At the PGA Championship last month, hosted at a Quail Hollow course which he has made his own, he was also fitful and frustrated. At least there he made the cut. It was clear his trip north would be a short one after the disaster came early Friday afternoon. A wild second shot out of the right rough on the 5th hole ended up with a lost ball and from there little improved as he carded an ugly quadruple eight. Another bogey at the 8th left him on 6-over with the cutline disappearing over the horizon. 'I didn't hit enough fairways. I felt like I drove the ball better yesterday than I did today. I think, once I made that big number on the front nine, I was always behind the 8 ball a little bit. After nine holes, I sort of resigned myself to the fact that I'd be flying home to Florida tonight,' McIlroy said. It got worse, another wild drive on 10 the spark for another bogey and then a wet tee shot on the short 11th resulting in a double. Even the late brace of birdies was offset by one more bogey in between on the 17th. Look at the strokes gained data and there were only flashing red lights for the Holywood man. Most worryingly, he was 148th of 153 off the tee. After the driver he used to win at Augusta was deemed non-conforming in a pre-PGA check at Quail Hollow, McIlroy has been testing out a new big stick. So far it's a bit of trial and a lot of error. 'So I went back to a 44-inch driver this week to try to get something that was a little more in control and could try to get something a bit more in play. But if I'm going to miss fairways, I'd rather have the ball speed and miss the fairway than not,' he explained. 'I was saying to Harry going down the last this is the second time this year I've tried the new version, and it hasn't quite worked out for me. So I'd say I'll be testing quite a few drivers over the weekend.' The Irish challenge will instead be carried by Shane Lowry who followed Thursday's stellar 64 with a steadier two-under 68 to put himself in a halfway clubhouse tie for sixth, four shots back of leader Cameron Champ.
