The crowd at The Open will pull for Rory McIlroy. But does he deserve to be the favourite?
By D.R.
IN PRETTY MUCH every tournament he enters, Tiger Woods is the centre of attention among golf fans and media. This year’s Open Championship, which begins on July 18th in Northern Ireland—the first time it has been played outside the island of Great Britain since 1951—is a rare exception.
In the run-up to the final major of 2019, all eyes have focused on Rory McIlroy, the world’s third-ranked player. He grew up in the Belfast suburb of Holywood, just 100 km (62 miles) away from the host course at Royal Portrush Golf Club, and once shot a course-record 61 on the club’s Dunluce Links—when he was just 16 years old. Although it is the Masters Tournament, not the Open Championship, that Mr McIlroy must win in order to complete golf’s career grand slam, he has made clear that he would regard a victory on his home turf as a crowning achievement. “There’s nothing that I’d like more than to lift that Claret Jug in front of all my friends and family,” he said last month. “Would it be my most special win? 100 percent.”
Mr McIlroy’s career arc is hard to characterise in a simple narrative. From his first professional win in the Dubai Desert Classic in 2009 at the age of 19 up to his back-to-back major victories in the Open Championship and PGA Championship in 2014, Mr McIlroy looked like the clear heir to Mr Woods as golf’s emblematic superstar. Shortly after turning 26, he had amassed four major titles, 17 professional wins and the world’s number-one ranking—the exact same totals compiled by Jack Nicklaus, the sport’s all-time leader in major victories, at the same age.
Since then, Mr McIlroy has fallen off the pace. He has not won a major since 2014, and has “just” seven victories in the past four years, half his haul from the previous four. Yet although his trophy case is filling up at a somewhat slower rate than it did during his prodigious youth, there is little evidence that Mr McIlroy has lost a step. According to EAGLE, The Economist’s statistical prediction system for golf tournaments, Mr McIlroy actually played much of the best golf of his career during a relatively fallow period in 2016 and 2017. Although he may not have strung together the four consecutive outstanding rounds necessary to win a tournament as often as he had previously, his average scores during those years (after adjusting for playing conditions) were nearly half a stroke below par per round, an elite mark. Armchair psychologists might attribute a player’s failure to convert consistent low scores into victories to cracking under pressure. Statisticians are more inclined to call it bad luck.
Mr McIlroy did suffer a brief slump from late 2017 to the end of 2018. But he has returned with a vengeance this year, winning two of the 14 tournaments he has entered and finishing among the top ten in nine more. Bettors seem unconcerned by his long drought in major tournaments, and seem to be pricing in a sizeable home-course advantage for him at Royal Portrush. Whereas punters only considered him the fourth-favourite at the US Open last month, trailing Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Mr Woods, this time they have him comfortably in the lead, at around a one-in-ten shot to win.
Is the public getting carried away in its enthusiasm for the local hero? From a mathematical perspective, the 10% chance of victory implied by betting-market prices is almost certainly too high. Not since Tiger Woods’s peak has one player outpaced the field by a sufficiently large margin to justify a double-digit win probability. Mr McIlroy is undoubtedly one of the finest golfers on the planet. But so are Mr Johnson and Mr Koepka, and a large cohort of players, such as Patrick Cantlay and Justin Rose, sit just a half-step behind them. The vagaries of a tiny bouncing ball on a 7km course are so hard to predict that even small advantages in luck tend to dwarf relatively large differences in skill over just 72 holes.
In relative terms as well as absolute ones, however, the case for Mr McIlroy as clearly superior to Mr Johnson is hard to make. It is Mr Johnson who finished second in two of the past three majors, and whose overall average scores in recent years tower above those of his closest competitors, including Mr McIlroy’s. EAGLE’s consistent anointing of Mr Johnson as the favourite in every tournament, despite his recent tendency to play the bridesmaid to Mr Koepka’s bride, may carry the whiff of a stopped clock being right twice a day. But there is too much evidence that Mr Johnson remains the world’s best player for any conceivable home-course advantage to vault Mr McIlroy into a distinct tier.
Moreover, the 7,344-yard layout at Royal Portrush does not particularly reward Mr McIlroy’s strengths. He is probably the best driver in all of golf, capable of reaching the green in two shots even on 600-yard par-fives. Conversely, his greatest weakness is on the greens: although he is capable of sinking long putts for birdie or eagle with impressive frequency, he ranks in the bottom half of the PGA Tour leaderboard during each of the past three years in the share of putts he has made from five to 15 feet (roughly 1.5 to 4.5 metres)—the range that has the biggest impact on overall scores. His skills are best suited for ultra-long courses with wide fairways and forgiving greens, like Erin Hills at the 2017 US Open (which played at some 7,840 yards during the first two rounds). In contrast, links courses often reward precision over power.
None of this means that Mr McIlroy should be counted out. Just last month Gary Woodland, one of the longest hitters on the PGA Tour, won the US Open at Pebble Beach, a links course some 300 yards shorter than Royal Portrush. Strong tee-to-green play is essential regardless of course conditions or layout, and when Mr McIlroy manages to steady his putter from middling distances, few if any golfers can keep up with him. There are not enough examples of superstars competing on courses on which they grew up playing to determine whether such familiarity conveys a meaningful advantage. But even a small benefit from his extensive experience at Royal Portrush, or from the rabid support of the crowd, would be enough to make Mr McIlroy a favourite.
As it stands, however, EAGLE ranks Mr McIlroy as the third-most-likely player to win. It gives him a 5.6% shot, trailing Mr Johnson at 7.4% and Mr Koepka at 6.3%. Any win probability over 5% in a major means a player is among the world’s absolute best. It also means that that about 17 times out of 18, Mr McIlroy’s fervent supporters will go home disappointed.
