Rory McIlroy once had an aura of destruction like Tiger Woods. Now, a decade after his last major, he's still struggling to get it back, writes Riath Al-Samarrai

You can still find the picture on Rory McIlroy’s social media feeds. It is getting old now, but it dates to a Sunday night in August 2014, when his flair for raiding and ransacking major golf tournaments found a natural home.

That was in Kentucky, at Valhalla, a club named after the celestial hall for feasting Vikings. He has not been back for a competitive round since, which is one reason why there’s an evocative feel to a photograph taken when so much more seemed possible.

It shows a 25-year-old phenomenon posing in the darkness with a pair of prizes — in his left hand is the Claret Jug, won the previous month at the Open, and in his right is the Wanamaker Trophy, secured a couple of hours earlier at the US PGA Championship.

His caption served only a fraction of justice to what had gone on. It read: ‘The summer of 2014 is one I’ll never forget!! #backtobackmajors.’

Now 35 and back at Valhalla this week for the US PGA, it is remarkable to think McIlroy’s haul of four majors has not grown. For all the mysteries of golf, there are few that compare to the conundrum of how McIlroy has progressed to win everything in his sport, except on the stages he values most.

Shane Lowry, McIlroy’s great mate, keeps the fairest perspective. ‘If that’s a slump, then bloody hell,’ he told Mail Sport recently. ‘Sure, he hasn’t won a major in 10 years but look at what he has won. It’s incredible.’

That’s about right. But it is also tempting to think back to Valhalla, to remember a point when McIlroy carried an aura of destruction unseen since Tiger Woods. A point when it was viewed as a formality McIlroy would one day be at the feast of his sport’s all-time greats. ‘In 2014 he was the best player in the game,’ says Paul McGinley, whose status as one of golf’s shrewdest analysts is enhanced in these conversations by having been the Ryder Cup captain that year. For understanding the differences between the McIlroy who left Valhalla and the McIlroy who returns, he offers a compelling voice.

‘I was studying everything that year,’ he tells Mail Sport. ‘Rory was at his peak. He was dominating, playing a game no one else was playing at the time.

‘I wouldn’t say he was invincible — there were still a few gremlins. He could have wobbles. I remember the year before we had a chat about the Ryder Cup. His form in 2013 hadn’t been great and I said to him, “Do me a favour Rory, and make sure you qualify automatically rather than me wasting a pick on you”. I said it tongue in cheek but straightaway he won the Australian Open (in December 2013) and I get a text saying, “Don’t worry, you won’t be wasting a pick”, with a smiley face. Rory just made things happen.

‘That summer, 2014, he was brilliant. He won the Open and what is sometimes forgotten is he then went and won at the WGC tournament in his next start, which was the week before Valhalla, so he was on for three in a row.’

What followed would be one of the most compelling majors of recent times, largely because of the drama of the final round.

Until then, the questions around McIlroy concerned whether he could handle the pressure of a close Sunday battle. He had been a runaway leader through 54 holes at each of his major victories — the 2011 US Open, 2012 US PGA and the Open three weeks earlier — but Valhalla worked its field into a far tighter competition.

McIlroy had held a one-shot advantage after three rounds over Bernd Wiesberger, who in turn had Phil Mickelson, Henrik Stenson and Rickie Fowler in pursuit. Getting off to a poor start on Sunday, with his start delayed two hours because of heavy rain, McIlroy was a full three shots down on Fowler by the turn.

‘It was getting away from him,’ McGinley says. That was until something happened on the 10th hole. ‘You know, I’ve often looked at the last 10 years and why he hasn’t won a major,’ McGinley says. ‘One thing I would say is he has not had luck — the good bounces. In that final round, watch the 10th back.’

The reference is to McIlroy’s second shot into the 590-yard par five. No one had reached the green in two all week and it’s where McIlroy’s round transformed. ‘It bounced well left of the green and I can still see it in my mind, because it caught a good bounce right and rolled 30 yards to six feet,’ adds McGinley. McIlroy made the eagle putt and that got him back on the horse.

‘When I talk about luck, I think about Rory at St Andrews in 2022 or the US Open last year. He had chances to win both, but in the final rounds he had no good breaks. They are so important in those times when it’s hard. Not just in terms of score, but psychologically. From there he was brilliant on that back nine.’ 

At various points through the final day at Valhalla, four men held the lead. With four holes to play, it was a tie between McIlroy and Mickelson, both on 15 under and the latter in the group in front with Fowler, one back. By the 18th, McIlroy was two clear, but a complication was that they had almost run out of daylight.

What followed was controversial — McIlroy teed off almost immediately after Mickelson and Fowler, and much to their irritation, he was cleared by officials to effectively play the last hole in tandem with them. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ said Sir Nick Faldo in commentary.

Needing an eagle to pull level, Mickelson missed with his chip for three by a couple of inches. McIlroy, who had come within a metre of water off the tee, would ultimately have two putts from 60ft in almost total darkness for his most dramatic major victory.

When the second dropped, he roared in a way we haven’t heard for some time and had done so, in his own words, by ‘winning ugly’.

The next day’s Daily Mail tapped into a theme that was repeated in coverage around the world: ‘Welcome to the Rory era, and what an exciting time it is going to be.’ Strange game, golf. It gives and it takes.

To flesh out Lowry’s view, McIlroy has won 21 titles across two tours in the past decade — he was in contention for No 22 at the Wells Fargo Championship last night — and in 20 out of 35 majors he has finished in the top 10. ‘He has been brilliant, won everything but a major,’ McGinley says. ‘Players Championship, FedEx Cup, Ryder Cups, national opens all over the place. World No 1 multiple times. Amazing career.’ And yet McIlroy has himself spoken about the truer metric by which he judges himself.

Faldo, with six to his name, told Mail Sport last year he retains a ‘sneaky feeling Rory will get to five eventually’, but worried about the ‘scar tissue’ of the past decade, especially that accumulated at the Masters, the tournament separating McIlroy from becoming the sixth man in history to complete the career slam.

The challenge for McIlroy exists on multiple fronts. In addition to the mental hurdles that grow with each passing major, he has had to deal with contenders who found great success with his blueprint.

As McGinley says: ‘Watch him at Valhalla and how he played that time with his driver. His caddie JP Fitzgerald (who worked with McIlroy for eight seasons until 2017) realised Rory was straighter with his driver than he was with his three wood and two iron. So his view was, “Rory, forget about playing safe, we’re going to overpower golf courses”.

‘He wrestled courses to their knees and even if he got out of position it didn’t hurt him. It was an aggression players hadn’t seen up to then. Not even from Tiger Woods. Greg Norman was super-aggressive but wasn’t as straight as Rory. It was a new form of golf and then slowly the likes of Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka decided to play a similar style.

‘If you look at his stats now, he’s still brilliant off the tee, but he isn’t the only one doing it that way. That’s a big difference.’

Another is perhaps more fundamental. Even when Koepka overtook McIlroy’s major haul by reaching five at the US PGA last year, there has long been a view that if everyone’s best golf collided across recent seasons, Jon Rahm included, McIlroy would come out on top. McGinley is among the consensus who believes world No 1 Scottie Scheffler has changed the stakes entirely.

‘I would have said Rory up to a year ago but now I’d say Scottie with the level of golf he’s reaching,’ he adds. ‘On tee to green stats, Scottie is getting close to Tiger levels and then you see the margins (of victory) he is hitting when he putts well.’

Getting past Scheffler and crossing the line in a major should not be beyond McIlroy on his day. If there is a technical weakness, it seems to come with a wedge in hand, and there has also been a debate over whether McIlroy’s incursions into the political dumpster fire of LIV have sapped him at key moments. 

Watching McIlroy lose the US Open by one stroke last year would only harden the intrigue around fine margins.

McGinley disagrees. ‘At the height of all that, for 18 months across 2022 and 2023, he was brilliant,’ he says. ‘It inspired him, having that cause.’

Less debatable is the common wisdom that McIlroy’s task has only increased, with doubts piling on top of scar tissue on top of the ticking clock. ‘Rory’s like a soccer player who just needs one to go in off his backside,’ says McGinley. ‘Once he gets another, I see him adding a further three or four. He just needs to keep contending. Then it might all come down to one good bounce.’

Valhalla. No better place for memories of one good bounce and maybe no finer spot to rejoin the feast.