Fan favorite comes to Oak Hill with 'good memories' and 'good karma'
Rory McIlroy stopped short of saying he has the home course advantage this week for the PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club, especially when you consider he actually hasn’t played the East Course since its renovation.
“It’s not as if I have a ton of local knowledge here compared to everyone else,” McIlroy said Tuesday before heading out to play a practice round to get familiarized with the changes. “The last two days are the most I’ve really seen of this golf course over the last couple years.”
He may not have much of an advantage regarding the subtleties of the course or the best way to negotiate the daunting challenge of the East Course, but McIlroy will likely be the darling of the massive galleries.
Rochester is, after all, a pretty jingoistic town and given that his wife, the former Erica Stoll, is a hometown girl who grew up in Irondequoit and the bulk of her family is still based in the area, yeah, you might hear a few “Rory” chants this week.
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“I wouldn’t say it’s a hometown event, but I’m hopefully going to get some more support than most of the others in the field, which is nice,” McIlroy said. “It’s nice to come back to somewhere that you’re familiar with, that you’ve got obviously really good memories and sorta good karma. I certainly know this area probably a little better than most of the people in the field. Hopefully that support will help me and give me some momentum as the week goes on.”
McIlroy has grown to love the western New York region since he began dating Stoll a decade ago. He made frequent visits to the area when they were dating, and many more since they were married in 2017, and then after they had their first child in 2020.
For a guy who was born and raised in Northern Ireland, and is technically the enemy when he plays for Europe in the Ryder Cup, McIlroy has a huge fan base in the United States, and Rochester leads the way.
“I’ve only had one garbage plate in my life; I haven’t went overboard with that,” he said with a smile. “I didn’t know a ton about this part of the world pre-2013, I guess, the first time we played here (in the 2013 PGA).
“I’ve spent summers here, I’ve spent falls here, I’ve spent a few Christmases here. I really love the seasons. We live in Florida, we don’t get that, so it’s nice to come up here and see the leaves change in October and have the snow at Christmastime. There’s certainly parts of it that I’ve really enjoyed and will continue to enjoy.”
What he tries to convey to people that he meets or those who don’t really know much about Rochester is that even though it’s a city in the state of New York, it’s not New York City.
“I think when people hear New York, they think of New York City and New Yorkers,” he said. “But the people and the culture up here is not like that very much. I feel like it feels a bit more like Midwest rather than like New York City. It’s a little more of, I guess, a relaxed lifestyle up here, which is nice. A lot of outdoorsy stuff and you can hike and ski and there’s a ton of stuff to do around the Finger Lakes. I’ve gotten to know all of that stuff, which is quite nice.”
He also knows a little about the nearest NFL franchise to Rochester. Like many here, McIlroy has become a fan of the Buffalo Bills, though that wasn’t always the case.
“It certainly makes it easier to root for the Bills when Josh Allen is throwing the football,” he said, a nod to the pre-Allen playoff drought years.
Allen was up in Toronto Monday for the Blue Jays game against the Yankees and he took batting practice beforehand, even cranking a few over the left-field fence at Rogers Centre. And Tuesday he was at Oak Hill where he made an appearance with students from East High School. No word on whether he and McIlroy crossed paths.
“I know he’s a big golf fan,” McIlroy said. “I haven’t met him. I think he played the Pebble Beach pro-am this year, but I didn’t play there. Yeah, I’d obviously love to meet him.”
McIlroy looks to get back to his winning ways
As for the primary reason why he’s here - to win his first major championship since he captured his second PGA Championship in 2014 - McIlroy is searching for his ‘A’ game lately.
He closed 2022 with a flourish, winning the Tour Championship late last August and then backing that up by winning the 2022-23 season-opening CJ Cup in late October. When the main part of the schedule got going again after the New Year, he finished tied for second at Bay Hill and solo third at the World Match Play during a three-week span in March.
Since then, he had a terribly disappointing missed cut at the Masters, failing for the ninth time to complete the career grand slam, and then after taking nearly a month off, he finished tied for 47th at the Wells Fargo Championship two weeks ago.
“I don’t know,” he said when asked whether he thought the time off helped get his mind back in the proper space. “I needed it at the time. Whether it works this week or not remains to be seen.
“You’re always going to have your ups and downs in the game. I have to go out there and just hit good golf shots and respect the golf course and play the golf course the right way. But no, there’s nothing drastic that I need to change. I’ve been working a little bit on my swing the last couple of weeks trying to get that back in order. If I can execute the way I feel I know that I can, then I should be okay.”
Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana.To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which will come out every Friday during the offseason, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Rory McIlroy may be the darling of Oak Hill with Rochester connections
