12 reasons to root for Rory McIlroy

BETHESDA, Md. -- Know many 22-year-olds who have won millions around the world playing a sport for a living that spend a few days in earthquake-ravaged Haiti before one of their biggest weeks of the year? Me neither.

That's one of the reasons Rory McIlroy seems to be universally praised after his record-breaking 8-shot victory at the 111th U.S. Open on Sunday at Congressional Country Club.

Here are a few more.

A quick study After his well-documented collapse at the Masters, McIlroy not only didn't disintegrate at his next major, he went out and won it in dominating fashion.

Golfers often suffer mental scarring after dealing with such a dramatic defeat. Not McIlroy. He got right back on the horse and tamed it, demolishing the field.

How did he change so quickly?

"I needed to be a little more cocky, a little more arrogant on the golf course," McIlroy said. "And think a little bit more about myself, which I've tried to incorporate a little bit, just on the golf course. I just try and have a bit of an attitude, you know?"

When making that statement, he was clear that he was talking solely about his on-course demeanor, not how he carries himself outside the ropes.

Killer instinct Tiger Woods is famous for beating up the field while it's down. If he led by five shots, he wanted it to be 10. Simple as that.

Well, McIlroy started Sunday at the 111th U.S. Open with an 8-shot lead on his closest followers and birdied the first hole to make it a 9-shot advantage. When Y.E. Yang hit it close at the 10th hole Sunday to draw the cheers of the crowd, McIlroy stuffed it closer, coming up just inches short of making a hole-in-one on the par-3 over water.

That's killer instinct.

Put away the silver spoon To be a legend, you have to hit shots that people will talk about for years. Nicklaus' putt on the 17th hole at Augusta in 1986 comes to mind. Pick one of a half-dozen of Tiger's shots at Torrey Pines in 2008 on a broken leg.

In Friday's second round from 114 yards on the par-4 8th hole, McIlroy holed a wedge from the fairway. The ball landed 25 feet past the cup and spun all the way back as if he lined it up like a putt.

It's a start.

Defeat builds character The old golf adage goes: You learn more about someone in defeat than you do in victory. That was clearly evident after McIlroy lost that four-shot lead at the Masters with a disastrous back-nine collapse.

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12 reasons to root for Rory McIlroy
12 reasons to root for Rory McIlroy

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And I figured posting about it would make for a great opportunity to talk about The Horrible Crowes .

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Master the SSAT & ISEE

Master the SSAT & ISEE

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Historical semantics, historical word formation

Historical semantics, historical word formation

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Advances in Web-age information management, 4th international conference, WAIM 2003, Chengdu, China, August 17-19, 2003 : proceedings

Advances in Web-age information management, 4th international conference, WAIM 2003, Chengdu, China, August 17-19, 2003 : proceedings

Each word in the hierarchical index structure, except the words in the first level, corresponds to a phrase, which is the words list from the root word to ...

The World Book Dictionary

The World Book Dictionary

A list of prefixes and suffixes commonly used in word building follows on pages 18-19. Attachable, attaching, reattach, and unattached have the same root. ...

Stedman's medical dictionary, a vocabulary of medicine and its allied sciences, with pronunciations and derivations

Stedman's medical dictionary, a vocabulary of medicine and its allied sciences, with pronunciations and derivations


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