Rory Hyperbole Watch Turns Up Mixed Bag Of Post-U.S. Open Commentary
/Martin Samuel gets the most carried away in his Rory McIlroy-wins U.S. Open hyperbole:
Does America have the stomach to sit through a decade of this, if Graeme McDowell and Padraig Harrington are correct in their assessment of his potential?
On hearing Harrington had McIlroy in contention to surpass Nicklaus’s 18 major titles, McIlroy sunk his head into his hands. ‘Oh, Paddy, Paddy, Paddy,’ he murmured softly. He still had 18 holes to play and the ghosts of Augusta to outrun at the time.
By the end it did not seem such a wild opinion. Every facet of McIlroy’s performance carried an inescapable sense of history in the making.
Robert Lusetich grounds his views in reality:
In the end, it’s unfair to start placing these kind of burdens on McIlroy.
He himself understands their danger.
Heavy lies the crown.
“It’s nice that people say that, ‘He could win 20 major championships,’ but at the end of the day, I’ve won one,” he said.
“I obviously want to add to that tally. But you can’t let what other people think of you influence what you have to do. You have to just go out there, work hard, believe in yourself.”
In other words, let’s let him be Rory McIlroy rather than trying to make him the next Tiger Woods.
Steve Elling and John Huggan from this week's Pond Scrum:
Elling: Snap judgments, like Rory's occasional snap hook, are a dangerous proposition. Let's allow this one to breathe a bit. But it was transcendent, for sure. Really, he never wavered. Three bogeys and a double for the week? Guys had that much carnage and more on the card each day.
Interesting thought about par, John. Last time the Open was contested at Congressional, par was 70. So that's four extra strokes of red numbers right there. Again, nobody is diminishing the feat, just aiming for some proper context among the hyperventilating.
Huggan: Rory's play, on the other hand, deserves any plaudit going. For a 22-year old to compete with such assurance, poise and skill was something to relish. And best of all, golf has a superstar who can play at a transcendent level and be a nice guy at the same time.
Z-Score measures a particular performance against the entire field of values, accounting for both the average result and the full range of performances from top to bottom. It does a great job in capturing how much better or worse an individual score was versus the entire population, producing a value that translates across different tournaments, locales, and generations. For the purposes of this study, we analyzed the scores produced by players in every major since 1960,2 including only those players who completed four rounds. Performances in any sort of playoff were ignored.
