TROON, Scotland — After his heart-breaking defeat at the U.S. Open last month, Rory McIlroy received texts message from three of the greatest athletes of all-time: Michael Jordan, Rafael Nadal and Tiger Woods.
“MJ was maybe the first person to text me after I missed the putt on the 18th but both of them got in touch very, very quickly,” McIlroy told The Guardian of messages from Jordan and Nadal. “They just told me to keep going. MJ reminded me of how many game-winning shots he missed. Really nice.”
McIlroy didn’t mention the message from Woods and for good reason. Speaking at his press conference ahead of the 2024 British Open on Tuesday, Woods detailed how he waited a week before sending a text to McIlroy, who he knew from experience would be, he put it, “besieged by a lot of things going on,” and chose “to let things cool down.”
Woods shared the gist of his message to McIlroy. “We’ve all been there as champions. We all lose. Unfortunately, it just happened, and the raw emotion of it, it’s still there, and it’s going to be there for, I’m sure, some time,” Woods said. “The faster he’s able to get back on a horse and get back into contention, like he did last week, the better it is for him.”
Only thing is, McIlroy never got the message.
“Full disclosure, I changed my number two days after the U.S. Open, so I didn’t get it until he told me about it today,” McIlroy said at his press conference. “I was like, ‘Oh, thanks very much.’ So I blanked Tiger Woods, which is probably not a good thing.”
McIlroy said he was touched that Woods would take the time to reach out to him and appreciated that he waited to do so – if only he hadn’t switched numbers.
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“If he hadn’t have waited that long, I probably would have got it,” McIlroy said. “But I caught up with him earlier. It’s always nice when your hero and the guy that you had on your bedroom wall is reaching out and offering words of encouragement.”
And why exactly did McIlroy feel the need to change his phone number just days after he made bogey on three of the final four holes to lose by one at Pinehurst No. 2?
“From the time I left Pinehurst to the time I walked through my front door on Sunday night, I probably got about 10 or 15 text messages from media members, and I was like, it’s probably time to get a new number,” McIlroy explained. “Create a bit of space.”
McIlroy laughed at the suggestion that he officially made changing phone numbers the sixth stage of grief, but when asked when he finally reached the acceptance stage of his latest setback to end his nearly 10-year winless drought in the majors, he noted people would be surprised how quickly he got over it and moved on.
“I would say maybe like three or four days after, went from being very disappointed and dejected to trying to focus on the positives to then wanting to learn from the negatives and then getting to the point where you become enthusiastic and motivated to go again,” he said. “It’s funny how your mindset can go from I don’t want to see a golf course for a month to like four days later being can’t wait to get another shot at it. When that disappointment turns to motivation, that’s when it’s time to go again.”
But the 35-year-old McIlroy, who missed two putts inside of four feet in the final three holes, also pointed out that this Pinehurst pain paled in comparison to some other defeats, none more so in recent years than letting a three-shot lead on 10 slip away at St. Andrews in 2022, site of the 150th Open, when he was left reduced to tears.
“St. Andrews hurt way more than this one,” McIlroy told The Guardian. “Oh, my God, I didn’t cry after this.”
When McIlroy issued his first public remarks after speeding away from the Pinehurst parking lot without speaking to the media, he ended with a shot across the bow to the doubters who suggest he will be scarred by Pinehurst. “I feel closer to winning my next major championship than I ever have,” he wrote on social media.
When McIlroy fell short of Wyndham Clark at the 2023 U.S. Open, he said he would endure 100 Sundays like that just to win another major championship. Well, it can’t get much worse than Pinehurst. And he’s right when he says that if the tournament ended after 68 holes, “people would be calling me the best golfer in the world.”
In the immediate aftermath of the U.S. Open, he withdrew from the Travelers Championship and went to New York to decompress. He walked the High Line in Manhattan on Tuesday with headphones in his ears and while he was recognized by a few people, he enjoyed blending in and spending about an hour on the phone with mental coach Bob Rotella, who noted McIlroy’s pre-shot routine had become too long.
“The positives far outweigh the negatives but the negatives were pretty big,” he said. “You have to learn from it.”
So McIlroy got back on the horse last week at the Genesis Scottish Open, where he finished T-4 in his title defense, and heads into the final major with a new phone number, a shorter pre-shot routine and a renewed desire to claim a fifth major title.
“I’d love to be able to play the golf and get one over the line, but as soon as I do that, people are going to say, well, when are you going to win your sixth?” he said. “So it’s never-ending.”