I am not a business major but what little I do know about the world of finance is pretty simple: buy low, sell high. So let's congratulate the Open organisers for a nifty piece of business. After the 2009 tournament they managed to lock up a promising 20-year-old from Northern Ireland for both the 2010 and 2011 events at a reasonable price of US$300,000.
The kid had an affinity for the place and had just finished playing in his third Hong Kong Open. He said all the right things about how he genuinely enjoyed both the city and the tournament. One year ago he tied for sixth with a score of 18 under; since that time a few things have gone right in his life. 'It's been an eventful year,' Rory McIlroy said, deadpan, this week.
McIlroy, 21, left here a year ago a promising golfer and returned this week as the hottest property in the game, if not all of sport. He had an epic meltdown at the Masters but instead of running and hiding he answered every question in an admirably accountable manner that endeared him even more to the public.
Stand-up sorts are in short supply these days in the world of sports, where making the big bucks often precludes passing the buck. The next major he played in was at the US Open, where he destroyed the field for his first major. Along the way he took up with a new girlfriend, Caroline Wozniacki, who also happens to be the number one female tennis player in the world, and also managed to remain largely unaffected by his burgeoning superstardom.
He was clearly the darling of this year's Open and when he holed out for a birdie from a bunker on the 18th yesterday, let's just say this may be the best US$300,000 the Open has ever spent.
But the high-profile girlfriend and US Open trophy were not the only things different about McIlroy circa 2011. Although he is all of 22 years old, this was an extremely exhausted McIlroy and he hardly tried to hide it.
'Just feeling generally lethargic and lacklustre,' he admitted. Understandably. 'I played the Dunhill Links [in Scotland] and then I flew straight from there to the Korean Open,' he said. 'Then I went on the China Golf Challenge for seven days and straight to Bermuda for the Grand Slam of Golf and then back to Shanghai for two weeks. So there's been a lot of travelling.'
