NEW ORLEANS — Rory McIlroy stood on stage at TPC Louisiana on the 19 Green with a beer in one hand and a microphone in the other. With Mardi Gras beads around his neck, he stood next to one of his best friends, Sean Lowry, as the drunken New Orleans crowd chanted.
“Rory! Rory! Rory!
“Do you know any songs from the 1980s?” the band leader asked.
Then “Journey” starts playing.
The four-time major champion belted out “Don’t Stop Believing” on Sunday evening, throwing his head back and burying his chest in the notes. Lowry just laughed and drank his beer, watching his partner make a fool of himself. After a while, Lowry left with an answer as to why he wasn’t joining – “I’ll sing better.”
McIlroy just won a golf tournament. He needs to win a golf tournament. But he needs more than anything on the scorecard this week. McIlroy needs to have fun.
This is not a drill. Rory McIlroy sings “Don’t Stop Believing” pic.twitter.com/y5PkEDoqo4
— Brody Miller (@BrodyAMiller) April 28, 2024
It all started with a “boozy lunch” after they won the Ryder Cup last fall. McIlroy asked Lowry if they could team up for the Zurich Classic, the PGA Tour’s only team event. Lowry has competed in the event before but never asked McIlroy to team up out of fear of rejection. McIlroy sent Lowry a confirmation text message over Christmas. He’s coming to New Orleans.
Fast forward to Saturday night, and McIlroy and Lowry received a standing ovation from other diners at Arnaud’s, a classic white-tablecloth Creole restaurant just off Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. It wasn’t even a casual weekend in Louisiana. This is a jazz festival. It’s NFL Draft week. The Pelicans are heading into the playoffs. Yet people were so excited to have the No. 2 player in the world that they set up the largest gallery anyone can remember at TPC Louisiana and applauded them in the restaurant. One television reporter joked that the last athlete to win the honor was Reggie Bush nearly two decades ago.
“That’s weird to me,” Lowry said. “That won’t happen to me.”
“It won’t happen to me either!” McIlroy joked.
“He’s getting older,” Lowry said with a cheeky smile. “But he can still change things up a little bit. Rory has brought a group of people and people love him.
A little background. McIlroy has not been doing well this season. It became a running joke last week that Scottie Scheffler’s caddy, Ted Scott, will earn more than McIlroy in 2024. Roy has been under great pressure in recent years. He is the face of the PGA Tour in its war with LIV and a member of its most public-facing policy committee. Then the PGA Tour caught him off guard by striking a deal with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the owner of LIV, and when he was sent to speak to the media the next day, he called himself “expendable.”
He subsequently reportedly lost a power struggle over the tour’s future to Patrick Cantlay and decided to leave the board, with Sports Illustrated reporting that Cantlay joined the likes of Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth. Focus more on catering to the tour’s elite. McIlroy subsequently changed his tune and committed to a merger with LIV. He rubbed people the wrong way, publicly criticizing Spieth for saying the PGA Tour “doesn’t need” Saudi Arabia. He constantly comments that the desire for money is ruining the sport. He had an embarrassing incident with partners Spieth and Viktor Hovland at The Players Championship.
Oh, and golf has been affected too. It’s all relative. He finished in the top 30 almost every week, but had only one PGA Tour finish better than 19th all season. Two weeks ago, when he tied for 22nd at the Masters, he was asked if he needed to tighten up his swing and do a complete reset.
He then traveled to New Orleans.
McIlroy wasn’t locked in this week, at least not for most of the week. This week it was with his old friend Shane. Come Tuesday, they didn’t even practice because the course was so busy, so they hung out on the chipping green. They barely even played another ball in Wednesday’s Pro-Am. They seemed to hit whenever they wanted while walking and talking. They crushed Drago’s chargrilled oysters on the tenth hole and made fun of each other.
Who knows how worried they were when they entered the seventh hole on Sunday, five shots behind the leader. Yes, they are competitors and want to win, but they are just going with the flow.
Then McIlroy was on fire. By alternating shots, they made four birdies in the next five holes to get one back. McIlroy hit a perfect iron shot on No. 14 and produced a nice little club spin that he hasn’t shown in years. When he hit his ball on No. 16 into the bunker, he hunched over and hung his head in frustration for a full minute.
But don’t worry. Lowry hit a perfect wedge from the bunker to the center of the green, and McIlroy hit a big breakaway putt to share the lead.
On the par-3 17th hole, Lowry’s tee shot flew into the crowd and he missed a difficult par putt. He was clearly disappointed in himself, but McIlroy quickly chased him down the green, saying, “Hey, Sean. That was a good putt.”
“Rory has been supporting me this week,” Lowry said. “He’s a great teammate and he makes me believe in myself. It’s great to have him do it.
They then made 18 birdies to head into a playoff, where as Martin Trainer missed a putt in the playoff, McIlroy won his 25th PGA Tour championship and Lowry Earning himself a spot in the remaining PGA Tour signature events. teamwork.
Rory McIlroy and Sean Lowry chase Chad Remy and Martin Trainor at the Zurich Classic on Sunday. (Stephen Lu/USA Today)
Yes, maybe McIlroy is the key to winning this week, but it’s also possible that Lowry is the key to a week that McIlroy desperately needs. Because he admits this week is about getting away from stress.
“Of course,” he said. “The reason Sean and I started playing golf is because we thought it would be fun to play golf at a certain stage in our lives. I think it always helps to reinject a little fun into the week like this one.
As the event concluded, tournament organizers could be seen celebrating the victory of one of the sport’s biggest stars, and possibly returning to defend his title next year. This is not one of the bigger events on the tour. They will kill for McIlroy on the court again. So someone asked him: “Has anyone started to want to sell you after you came back?”
“I don’t think they need to try,” McIlroy said. “I think we’ll be back.”
(Top photo: Chris Grayson/Getty Images)
