Rory McIlroy’s Players-winning week illuminated his many layers

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Rory McIlroy’s week at the Players Championship started with a heckle and ended with heroics. On Monday morning, McIlroy claimed his second career Players title after beating J.J. Spaun in a three-hole aggregate playoff in blustery conditions at TPC Sawgrass.

It was a week that illuminated what makes McIlroy such a compelling figure off the course and magnetic one on it.

After 20-year-old college golfer Luke Potter chirped McIlroy with a dig about his 2011 Masters collapse during Tuesday’s practice round, McIlroy walked over to the rope line and grabbed the phone of one of Potter’s teammates. The college players were removed from the premises.

It was an understandable, human reaction from McIlroy. A revealing one, too, as my colleague James Colgan noted. It showed the duality of the four-time major winner. The unpredictability of the contrasting versions he chooses to exhibit.

He is both willing and vulnerable enough to show the emotional anguish of his failures but also knows he can’t let those letdowns define him.

McIlroy’s week at TPC Sawgrass, which culminated Monday after his Sunday surge came up one shot short of a 72-hole win, was all about this give-and-take.

On Wednesday, McIlroy said he plans to retire with “some left in the tank” and that he won’t play on the PGA Tour Champions. In the next breath, he allowed there is always the possibility he could change his mind. To be willing to evolve your positions based on new information is admirable and a sign of an ability for deep introspection.

Same goes for his on-course approach.

McIlroy can overpower almost any test, but he’s working to fight his natural aggressive instincts in an attempt to mirror what has made Scottie Scheffler so dominant over the last two years.

That mentality shift helped McIlroy win the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am earlier this year and had him enter the final round at TPC Sawgrass within striking distance of another Players title. Despite beginning the day four shots back of 54-hole leader J.J. Spaun, McIlroy was expected to track down the contenders ahead of him with an average world ranking of 103. Anything else would be a letdown.

The curse of being great is that the accompanying expectations lead only to failures being magnified exponentially. McIlroy knows this too well as his major championship drought enters its 11th year.

So McIlroy arrived at TPC Sawgrass on Sunday with the steeled look of a player who knew what he was supposed to do but also understood that achieving it would not quiet the questions to come.

He made birdie at No. 1 and stuck his second shot on the par-5 2nd to 10 feet that led to an eagle. His 3-3 start cut the lead from four to one in 30 minutes.

Then came a four-hole stretch that yo-yoed between two McIlroys.

After his drive on 6 found the right pine straw, McIlroy needed to hit a shot that required about 40 feet of left-to-right movement to avoid the trees and give himself a birdie look. He slung a fade into the Florida sky, leaving himself a 25-foot look right of the pin, and made par.

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On the next hole, the par-4 7th, McIlroy found himself in the middle of the fairway with a green light to go hunting. But he hung his approach shot out left and into the bunker, which led to a sloppy bogey. McIlroy turned right back around and stuffed it to 14 feet on the par-3 8th to make only the second birdie of the day at that hole. At the par-5 9th, McIlroy hit his second shot over the green and failed to get up and down for birdie.

It was a tug of war between the rare shots seemingly only McIlroy is capable of pulling off and the frustrating mistakes that often have come to define his greatest failures.

After a four-hour weather stoppage on Sunday, McIlroy came out and stuck his approach shot on No. 12 to 14 feet. He rolled in the birdie and his lead was suddenly three. On a back nine that he has ripped apart of late, the golf tournament felt over. The final six holes would merely be a jaunt into history for McIlroy.

But instead, he played the final six holes in one over, including missing birdie looks of seven, 11 and 11 feet to let Spaun catch him and force a Monday playoff.

“It’s a little bit of both,” McIlroy said after his round Sunday when asked if he was proud or disappointed in his round, given where he started the day. “I’m happy to be in the position that I am, but also I feel like I had chances there on the back nine to close the door, and I didn’t quite do that. A little bit of both.”

Monday’s three-hole playoff lacked drama. McIlroy hit a 336-yard drive on the par-5 16th and made an easy birdie while Spaun made bogey. Five minutes later, McIlroy was safely on the island green at 17 after hitting a crisp, flighted, non-stock nine iron to 29 feet. When Spaun hit his tee shot over the green and into the water, McIlroy’s second Players Championship title was all but sealed. Despite a three-putt bogey at 17 and a wayward tee shot on 18, McIlroy easily closed out Spaun.

That he was able to win at TPC Sawgrass while hitting fewer than 50 percent of fairways shows McIlroy’s transformation into a more “complete” player (his word). He’s now able to win in different ways on different tracks and is no longer reliant on nuking away a field with the driver.

Monday was yet another achievement fitting a Hall of Fame career.

 “I think the only multiple major champions and multiple Players champions are [Jack Nicklaus], [Tiger Woods], [Scottie Scheffler] and myself, so it’s a pretty nice group to be a part of,” McIlroy said Monday.

But then McIlroy’s duality reared its head one final time.

While still basking in the golden aura of his most recent triumph, McIlroy was asked how recent heartbreaks at the 2024 U.S. Open and other tournaments have helped him build scar tissue and prepare him not to repeat history. He took a moment, as if that chirp on the 18th hole was still hanging in the Sawgrass air.

He discussed the work he had done in the offseason after coming up short at Pinehurst, the Scottish Open and Wentworth.

“It doesn’t feel like I’m making those mistakes at the critical times like I was previously,” McIlroy said. “I think a big part of that was just learning from those mistakes. It’s a long career. You have to stay incredibly patient. Yeah, I would say that some of those losses have helped me learn what to do when I’m in those positions again.”

As is always the case with McIlroy, celebration of achievement quickly fades and is replaced by unanswerable questions about how he’ll deal with what’s waiting for him on the horizon.