Why Nike will have been far from happy with Rory McIlroy's painful football game
Irish star's kick-around with his mates in the build-up to one of the year's majors extends the boundaries of stupidity
It was a garish and ostentatious gathering, over the top in every way. But then this is how they usually roll in the cash-crazy United Arab Emirates. In an overflowing event hall in Abu Dhabi with the famous Grand Mosque shimmering in the background and the famous swoosh shimmering in the foreground, a pulsating and pounding beat accompanied a saintly hologram of a golfer.
Up stepped a sheepish and somewhat overwhelmed 23-year-old from County Down in Northern Ireland. A few months earlier, Rory McIlroy had won the PGA Championship to go along with his record-breaking 2011 US Open championship. For the No 1 player in the world greatness was no longer assumed, it was consumed. "I don't play for money, I am well past that," McIlroy said that day. "I play for major championships and to win as many tournaments as I can."
On the stupidity scale of one to 10, McIlroy's actions are an 11. Even Tiger in his heyday would never have been so careless
However, there was no mistaking the reason for the gathering in Abu Dhabi. It was all about money. Speculation had been running rampant for months in media quarters about the deal McIlroy was poised to sign with apparel giant Nike. Ten years for US$250 million was the most often mentioned number and when the deal was eventually consummated the exact details were not released.
That kind of money comes with a great deal of responsibility as well an implicit sense of being indentured to your new boss. And whatever things Nike was paying McIlroy US$25 million per year to do, playing soccer with his mates a few weeks before the Open Championship at St Andrews was most definitely not one of them.
McIlroy has officially announced that he will not be able to defend his title at St Andrews this week because he ruptured his left ankle ligament during, as he describes it, "a soccer kick about with friends". Just being a lad, were you Ror? Ah, that's grand. Boys will be boys, unless of course that boy has a multi-million dollar obligation to the world's largest sporting apparel company.
Chances are he will also miss next month's PGA Championship and once again fail to defend another major championship. On the stupidity scale of one to 10, McIlroy's actions are an 11. Even Tiger in his heyday would never have been so careless. He might have been chasing every cocktail waitress this side of Pluto but the good folks at Nike knew the notion Woods might engage in a pickup basketball game a few weeks before the Masters was downright absurd. Those kind of things were for the off-season.
Not since 2002, when Tiger won both the Masters and the US Open, has a golfer come into the Open Championship with a shot at the grand slam
Enter the American prince, Jordan Spieth, golf's new messiah and the player best poised to unseat McIlroy as No 1. Not since 2002, when Tiger won both the Masters and the US Open, has a golfer come into the Open Championship with a shot at the grand slam. With Spieth on the precipice of history it was widely assumed the biggest impediment in his path would be McIlroy, the holder of the two titles Jordan seeks. With the Open Championship being contested at historical St Andrews, the home of golf, the anticipation was palpable. It was the type of moment the golf world salivates over as it tries to find its way post-Tiger. And it is exactly the type of moment and exposure Nike pays McIlroy US$25 million for. But not this time.
They may not be saying it publicly, but rest assured that the overlords at the swoosh are furious with McIlroy, and rightfully so. Compounding the indignation will be the sight of Spieth parading around St Andrews with Nike's upstart competitor Under Armour's logo prominently emblazoned on his being. For McIlroy, it is a painful lesson. He just learned the hard way that his career is no longer his alone.
