Rory McIlroy goes back to first love, where back-to-back majors feels fated

Irish Examiner

13-05-2025

Can a time warp also be timeless? With Nick Faldo on the microphone all things are possible.
Roll the video and Rory McIlroy is so clearly a previous incarnation of himself. The threads: a brown, baby blue and green striped polo doesn't strike our 2025 eyes as 2010 chic but something your oul fella would've worn to mow the lawn back then. It's matched with a pair of blinding white pants that billow around McIlroy's 20-year-old thighs and calves, yet to be bulked. Saturday night fever meets Sunday afternoon starboy.
There's the dark, twisting curls bursting out of the bottom of his cap and a little puppy fat around the chin and cheeks. Rory Óg or OG Rory, whichever you prefer. Even in redux mode, McIlroy skilfully straddles thorny things like the Irish Language Act.
Up in the commentary box above the 18th green, Faldo is the same Faldo, his only incarnation.
'That was a very warm welcome for a young…foreign…lad. Beautiful,' stumbles Faldo, who has belatedly become an skilled pundit but back then could sound like an Accidental Country Club Partridge waiting to happen. 'I should think [he'll be] lagging up for a par four.' Thought wrong, Nick. From 43 feet back on the 72nd and final hole of the 2010 Quail Hollow Championship, McIlroy sends a wondrous putt coursing confidently up and then turning towards the hole.
'How about making it?' asks Faldo's CBS partner Jim Nantz, meeting the moment with a tone and pitch that told viewers this wasn't a standard Tour Sunday but a date and an occasion marking the beginning of something big. The birdie drops. 'Ha-haaa,' Nantz howls. 'Welcome to the big time, Rory McIlroy. Wow, what a finish!'
The record shows that the big time began on May 2, 2010. Fifteen years and 10 days later McIlroy made his way back here Monday. He was greeted with angry skies that emptied a deluge down. It will clear and dry out as the week goes on. Anyway, there are likely no climactic conditions which could make McIlroy uncomfortable here.
From that week to this, Quail Hollow, a rolling, rippling former dairy farm south of Charlotte, has become the Holywood man's favourite stop. So much so that he's looked at making it an extended stay.
After winning last year's Wells Fargo here, racking up his fourth victory on a track where he has twice set the course record and made 10 top-10s out of 14 visits, he admitted he'd spent time on Zillow, a Stateside version of Daft, browsing nearby houses.
McIlroy is a sponsor's ultimate dream because he can say with believable sincerity that he likes many things, many places, many products. When it comes to Quail Hollow, however, he speaks of love. Leaving the Truist Championship in Philadelphia on Sunday to travel down to North Carolina for his tilt at a third Wannamaker Trophy this week, he again sounded smitten.
'I'm in a good place. I didn't feel like I played all that well this week, I still finished seventh. Even what I feel is my bad golf, I'm still there or thereabouts,' McIlroy said. 'A couple tweaks, especially going to a place I love like Quail Hollow, and I'm in a really good spot.'
You never forget your first love and diving back into footage from that scintillating Sunday in 2010 offers early evidence as to why McIlroy would make this course his own. Yet it's important too to rewind just a little more, 48 hours, to when a late eagle ensured he made the cut by the bare minimum. In a fitful first few months Stateside it had looked to be another missed cut until it wasn't.
From there, the breakout began. McIlroy carded 10 birdies on the Saturday to move into the fourth-last group on Sunday. He was paired with America's own starlet, Anthony Kim, chasing Angel Cabrera, Phil Mickelson and Davis Love atop the leaderboard. The chase would turn into a rout, McIlroy firing eight birdies and an eagle in a course-record 62.
In a fascinating, granular breakdown last week exploring why McIlroy is so damn good here, Golf Digest began with the most common observation: if you drive it far and well, Quail Hollow rewards you. This is true. But going deeper, the analysis suggested the course eschews the wedge competitions we see too often elsewhere and instead lets McIlroy be the most effective version of his 'long-range sniper' self.
While that monster birdie putt on 18 became the image of his historic 2010 breakthrough, the shot which better fits that analysis and perhaps best explains this magical meeting of course and player came at the long 15th. A booming drive left McIlroy 206 yards back in the fairway. He pulled out a 5-iron and arrowed it into a couple of feet. The eagle pushed him three clear of Mickelson and he navigated the daunting closing three holes, the Green Mile, with all of that momentum finishing with a magical flourish.
The young star subplot proved a rout too: he bettered Kim's score by eight shots and as McIlroy returns here the newest member of the grand slam club, Kim's current career 'renaissance' sees him finish last or close enough to it every week on the LIV Tour.
Since that inaugural win, this place has been both familiar and fertile ground. It has served as a springboard but also a source of solace in rough times for McIlroy. With his greatest weight lifted at last month's Masters, the opportunity to win back-to-back majors here of all places feels almost fated.
'When you're not winning, when you're not delivering, it becomes a burden. [Rory] will be a lot more comfortable with who he is now.' Those words are Padraig Harrington's. They didn't come after Augusta 2025 but Quail Hollow 2010 after the Dubliner had hung around to see the breakthrough.
Fifteen years later at this same place, it's a quote that feels, well, timeless.