Augusta: As if the expectations of the outside world weren’t enough, Rory McIlroy can now feel the pressure ramping up at home as well.
Poppy, his four-year-old daughter, is slowly realising daddy is a famous man and wins golf tournaments for a lark.
“Especially after The Players, it was the first time she sort of realised what I did, which was really cool, but also a little scary at the same time,” said the four-time major champion, who is once again trying to secure a career slam by winning the Masters title this week.
“The day after, she went into school and a couple of kids said some stuff to her, and she came home and asked: ‘Daddy, are you famous?’
“I said it depends on whom you talk to. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword. You have to temper the expectations sometimes.”
Expectation is something that McIlroy is used to. Every year since his famous meltdown on the Sunday back nine as a 21-year-old, his chances of winning the major title on a golf course that seems tailor-made for his playing style, have been the biggest talking point of the Masters.
It’s the same old story again this year… probably a few notches higher. McIlroy has made a fantastic start to 2025, winning twice on the PGA Tour, including The Players, and was tied-fifth in the Houston Open the week before.
McIlroy dismissed the expectations as unnecessary noise.
“It’s just narratives. It’s noise. It’s just trying to block out that noise as much as possible. I need to treat this tournament like all other tournaments that I play,” said the world No2 from Northern Ireland.
“Look, I understand the narrative and the noise, and there’s a lot of anticipation and buildup coming into this tournament every year. But I just need to keep my head down and focus on my job.
“Over the course of my career, I’ve shown a lot of resilience from setbacks, and I feel like I’ve done the same again, especially post-June last year (when he lost the US Open to Bryson DeChambeau). The golf I’ve played since then is something I’m really proud of.
“You have setbacks, and you have disappointments, but as long as you can learn from them and move forward and try to put those learnings into practice, that is very, very important.
“When you have a long career like I have had, you sort of just learn to roll with the punches, the good times, the bad times, knowing that if you do the right work and you practice the right way, that those disappointments will turn into good times again pretty soon.”
This year, McIlroy has also been working with the famous golf mental coach, Bob Rotella.
“We have been talking about not getting too much into results and outcomes, we talk about trying to chase a feeling on the golf course. Like, if you’re on the golf course, what way do you want to feel when you’re playing? If I can chase that feeling and make that the important thing, then hopefully the golf will take care of itself,” he revealed about what the two have been working on.
Among the things McIlroy has changed this year – he is reading fiction (John Grishman’s The Reckoning) instead of heavy philosophical stuff, and watching period romance drama ‘Bridgerton’, which he had decided he’d never watch before his wife Erica insisted.
McIlroy has changed his own opinion on various things over the years, and it seems he has now also changed the way he handles his losses. On Tuesday, he said he has learned it is okay to be heartbroken.
“I think it’s a self-preservation mechanism,” he explained. “It happens in all walks of life. At a certain point in someone’s life, they don’t want to fall in love because they don’t want to get their heart broken. Human beings instinctively hold back sometimes because of the fear of getting hurt, and I was doing that on the golf course for a few years.
“But once you go through those heartbreaks, or disappointments, you get to a place where you remember how it feels and you wake up the next day and you’re like, ‘yeah, life goes on, it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be’.
“I think that’s why I’ve become a little more comfortable in laying everything out there and being somewhat vulnerable at times.”