It’s not a secret, or at least it should be taken as a secret that golf, as a sport, is in a serious need of a new hero, a new face, a new player that can be that breath of fresh air that the sport needs. For over a decade and a half the sport has been dominated by a single player that has managed to win 14 Mayor Tournaments, but that saw how his professional and personal life began to crumble down when after a couple too many drinks hit crashed his car against a tree. Almost two year’s since the incident that revealed Tiger Woods in his utter mess, in what many has believed to be the eclipse of his stardom, one young and talented Irishman has began what many foresee as the new face of golf. On the fair fields of the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland, in what the press has already called 4 days of mind-boggling golf, Rory McIlroy has managed to win his first US Open. Poised to fulfill his potential and become the youngest Masters champion since Tiger Woods, McIlroy shot 80 in a final round that was painful to watch. There was only one name called during the whole tournament. At 268, McIlroy hit the lowest 72-hole score in the US Open Toto Online.
He improved over the performances of Jim Furyk in 2003 at Olympia Fields and he even surpassed the out-of-this-world performance by Tiger Woods in the 2000 US Open at Pebble Beach. We can’t forget that this has been only 2 months after the young McIlroy suffered that final day collapse in Augusta National during the Masters. It was such a painful thing to see, for he deserved to win, and if he wasn’t meant to win his first Masters so young, he shouldn’t had to deal with such an crushing collapse when there where only 9 holes left to go. On the press conference, after winning the title, McIlroy looked so much older and wiser than he seemed just four days ago. “I felt like I got over the Masters pretty quickly. I kept telling you guys that, and I don’t know if you believed me or not. But here you go,” McIlroy said in the press conference, pointing at the shiny prize on the table. “Nice to prove some people wrong.” Not only did he prove a few people wrong, he also made a name for himself in the history of the sport.
He has set a new record for the US Open tournament, and at 22-years-old the talented son of a Irish bartender who had to work three different jobs to keep his son’s dream alive, became the youngest player since 1923 to win the US Open Championship. To really put this into perspective, we need to analyze just how good his numbers where in this tournament. The combined scores of the last 10 U.S. Open champions were 14-under par. McIlroy was 16 under. He finished eight shots ahead of Jason Day, whose score of 8-under 276 would have been enough to win 26 of the last 30 U.S. Opens.