Knock yourself out kiddo.
Paul Kimmage meets Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry: the full inside story of ‘roaring and shouting… complete rage’ in the Ryder Cup bust-up
Paul Kimmage
Let’s start with the photos and the captions on the front pages, because it always means something when sport leads the news, and it happened five times that week here at Independent House.
On the Tuesday it was ‘The Embrace’ as Shane Lowry arrived at the Cavalieri Hotel in Rome ahead of the Ryder Cup.
On the Thursday it was ‘Roman Holiday’, as Rory McIlroy and his wife Erica Stoll walked past fans at the Spanish Steps in Rome.
On the Saturday we had ‘The Bounce’, as Rory McIlroy strained to see the 12th pin during the Ryder Cup afternoon fourball matches at the Marco Simone Golf Club.
On the Sunday we had ‘The Row’, when Rory McIlroy and Patrick Cantlay’s caddie Joe LaCava exchanged words on the 18th green.
And on the Monday it was ‘The Dream Team’, with Lowry and McIlroy celebrating along with the rest of their Europe team-mates after they regained the Ryder Cup.
It was a brilliant story, and potentially a great interview: What if you sat them down together — a ‘double-header’ as we say in the trade — and took them step-by-step through everything that had happened that week?
But there was a better way.
1. Legacy of Rome
Last month a viral TikTok trend swept the internet, with millions of users admitting they think about the legacy of Rome every single day. Like Caesar on the steps of the Senate, this seems to be bleeding into the annals of popular culture. Professional golfer Rory McIlroy stated he takes inspiration from the teachings of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, which helped him find the courage to play a vital role in Europe winning the Ryder Cup.
We’ve also seen prominent figures in the world of business discuss their learnings of history, as biographer Walter Isaacson revealed that Elon Musk styles his leadership on French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte. Seeing himself as a “general on the battlefield.” So the question has to be asked: why are leaders so obsessed with historical figures, and why are audiences fascinated with history online?
Sascha O’Sullivan, City AM
It’s a Tuesday morning at his home in Jupiter, Florida. Shane Lowry has made coffee and is just about to sit down for the interview when the doorbell rings. A delivery has arrived from the European Tour with his stuff — golf bags, hats, shoes, suits, clothes — from Rome. He leads the courier to the garage, and returns to find a book by Marcus Aurelius where he’s been sitting.
“Rory’s book,” he says, glancing at the cover. “He was talking about this at the Ryder Cup.”
“I was hoping you’d call bullshit on that,” I say.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“They’re long days. You’re up at what, four o’clock? There’s no way he was reading that at the Ryder Cup.”
“No, he was. He showed me some quotes. He’s a funny fish. That’s the type of shit he does.”
Explainer: What caused Rory McIlroy’s carpark row at Ryder Cup 2023?
“What about you?” I ask.
“Naah.”
“Do you know who Marcus Aurelius was?”
“To be honest, no.”
“Have you seen Gladiator?”
“Yeah, but I can’t remember much about it.”
“Really?”
“No, but if I watched it last week I’d be the same,” he says. “I don’t know what it is … maybe it’s my attention span or something.”
“Marcus Aurelius was the [old] Emperor in Gladiator.”
“Oh, right. And this is what? A book of his quotes?”
“Yeah, his writings.”
“See, I’d have no interest in that. I mean, should I? I don’t know.”
“Had you been to Rome before?”
“I played the Italian Open there in 2019. It was my first tournament in Europe after winning The Open but I didn’t play great and missed the cut. I spent a couple of evenings in the city walking around … the Pantheon, and up to the Vatican and stuff.”
“Did you see the Colosseum?”
“Yeah, but I’m really bad at sightseeing. I was in New York last week with Wendy [his wife] and Iris [his daughter] and we did that One Vanderbilt building which was pretty cool. Then we went down to the Statue of Liberty but we didn’t get the boat — the weather was too bad. Then we went to the Museum of Natural History but the queue was a mile long, so I said, ‘F**k that!’ [laughs]. That’s just the way we are.”
2. Philosophy
The second-century AD world of Emperor Marcus Aurelius was in a shambles. A great plague ravaged western Europe as he embarked on a long and bloody war against the Germanic tribes along the Danube frontier. Faced with woes, along with old age and thoughts of death, the emperor sought comfort in philosophy.
Throughout his life, notably at odd moments during the military campaign, he jotted down his personal struggles, philosophical beliefs, and insights about being a better ruler and a person. Out of this sincere expression of introspection came 12 books contemplating life and the human condition. In total this collection is called ‘Meditations’.
… Throughout ‘Meditations’, Marcus Aurelius reiterates, almost obsessively, the idea that everyone ultimately shares the same destiny in this short life: death. “Human lives are brief and trivial,” he writes. “Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash.”
Juan Pablo Sanchez, National Geographic
Rory McIlroy is restrained by Shane Lowry during the car park confrontation at the Ryder Cup in Rome.
Rory McIlroy has just invested in a Formula 1 team and is flying back from Texas and the United States Grand Prix, when the goodies from Rome arrive at his door. He’s wearing a Ryder Cup baseball cap when we meet three days later and has rumbled me before we’ve even warmed the chairs.
“I see you’ve a nice copy of Meditations there,” he says, eyeing a stash I pull from a bag.
“I was hoping to spring it,” I reply. “I told Shane I didn’t believe you were reading it and he said, ‘No, he’s a funny fish. That’s the kind of shit he does.’”
“It’s true,” he laughs. “I’ve a lot of sides to me. I’ve been into Marcus Aurelius for a few years now. I had read Meditations but didn’t have it with me, so I pulled up a few of the quotes on my phone.”
“When was this?”
“Well, obviously Saturday night happened, and I woke up on Sunday morning with this sense of … urgency: ‘I just want to win this thing.’ We’re sitting at breakfast, because it’s a later start on Sunday and Erica made a joke about something and I didn’t laugh. ‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘lighten up.’ It was a long enough ride to the course from where we were staying, so in the car I was like, ‘What can I do to calm down?’ And I don’t know why it popped into my head. Rome? Emperor? But I looked it up on my phone.”
“What were the quotes that resonated?”
“I think I bookmarked the webpage [he checks his phone] … this is one: ‘You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realise this and you will find strength.’”
“Right.”
“‘Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be — be one.’”
“Right.”
“‘If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.’”
“Right.”
“‘The nearer a man comes to a calm mind the closer he is to strength.’”
“Right.”
“And I like this one [laughs]: ‘You shouldn’t give circumstances the power to rouse anger, for they don’t care at all.’”
“Okay, got it. Now let’s wind back for a moment to the source of your … ”
He laughs. “Angst?”
“Well, I was going to say ‘rage’ but we’ll go with angst if that fits. It’s Saturday afternoon at the Ryder Cup. Europe are seven points up after the first three sessions and you’ve been drawn against Patrick Cantlay and Wyndham Clark in match four with Matt Fitzpatrick.”
“Yep.”
“It’s your first match against Clark since an interview he gave to the Golf Channel in the build-up, when he was asked how he’d feel about playing you: ‘Tons of respect for Rory,’ he said, ‘but I’d like to think I’m better than him and I want to prove that.’ Was that in your head at all? Does that play any part in what follows?
“No.”
“It’s just shite.”
“Complete shite.”
“Because Cantlay was playing the golf?”
“Yeah, he was playing brilliant.”
3. If the hat fits
A war of words on the final green Saturday at the Ryder Cup spilled into the parking lot, where Rory McIlroy and caddie Jim ‘Bones’ Mackay had to be separated before leaving Marco Simone.
Tensions flared late on the 18th green, where Patrick Cantlay, who had been razzed by fans for his decision not to wear a team hat this week, poured in a 43-footer for birdie. That prompted American players and caddies, including Cantlay’s caddie, Joe LaCava, to take off their hats and whirl them around their heads — a mock celebration of what fans had been doing to Cantlay around every tee and green.
LaCava continued to celebrate even as McIlroy lined up his putt to tie. Believing that it had carried on too long, and that LaCava was too close to McIlroy, McIlroy’s caddie, Harry Diamond, shouted at LaCava to back up. That led LaCava to dismissively wave off Diamond, sparking a few more words from the European side, including Shane Lowry.
… After both McIlroy and partner Matt Fitzpatrick missed their putts to tie, Cantlay’s closing birdie proved the winning point for US, trimming its Day 2 deficit to five points. Afterward, LaCava walked over to the entire European side in an attempt to clear the air. McIlroy appeared to understand LaCava’s perspective, patting him a few times on the shoulder.
LaCava told Johnson afterward that the situation was ‘defused’ with McIlroy. “They played a great match,” McIlroy told a pool reporter, “and, I mean, a few scenes of the 18 will just fuel the fire for tomorrow.”
Less than a half-hour later, however, cameras spotted McIlroy in a fiery conversation with Mackay, who wasn’t directly involved in the incident on the final green. McIlroy pointed at Mackay and was heard screaming, “That can’t fg happen! That’s a fg disgrace!”
Held back by Lowry, and McIlroy’s wife, Erica, McIlroy was then led to a courtesy car and driven away. Lowry and Mackay then exchanged words for about 10 seconds before parting ways.
Ryan Lavner, NBCsports.com, September 30
Shane Lowry: I wasn’t playing on Saturday afternoon, and wasn’t going to go out on the course until the 12th or 13th. I saw the lads off the first tee, came in to have some lunch and sat down with Luke [Donald, the European captain] to watch it on TV. We were down in the first three matches and you could sense the momentum shifting. It was the same on Friday afternoon but we’d got out of jail, so Luke says, “Shane, you’re wanted on the course.”
Rory McIlroy: Shane is unbelievable. He injects an energy into the team that I don’t think would be there without him. The running joke that week was that he expends more energy when he’s not playing, than when he is playing. Momentum is so important in these matches. We’d been flying for the first three sessions, but there was a period on Saturday afternoon when it was just a little flat.
SL: I went out on the front nine and remember thinking: ‘Where the f**k are the crowd?’ It was quiet. We were down, and well down, in the top two matches; Rosie [Justin Rose] and Bob [Robert MacIntyre] were one-down against Justin [Thomas] and [Jordan] Spieth, and Rors and Fitz were one up on Cantlay and Clark.
RM: It was a tight match. We’re one up after four, all square after 11 and one up playing the 17th.
SL: It’s the last game on the course and we’re 2-1 down in the session, but Rory and Fitzy are one up with two to play so you’re thinking, ‘Win this and it’s Ryder Cup over.’
RM: Fitz and I both missed the green, Clark missed the green, Cantlay hit a really good shot to 15 feet and holed the putt. Big balls. I mean, when someone makes a birdie on 17, fair play to them. So we’re all square going down the last and there’s four balls on the green looking at birdie putts. So I’m like, ‘This is most likely going to end in a half.’
SL: Then Cantlay holed the putt and it all kicked off.
RM: Cantlay took a lot of stick that afternoon. There must have been 25,000 people waving hats at him. [There had been reports claiming Cantlay was refusing to wear a hat out of protest, believing players should be paid for their participation in the Ryder Cup]. I didn’t think it was too bad — we get it worse in the States — but I can imagine that when you’re hearing it for five hours it’s going to get to you at the end of the day. So when he holed the putt and the Americans started going mad and waving their hats, it was understandable. It’s what happened next that triggered me.
SL: I was standing at the back of the green and they were celebrating — which was fine — then I noticed Joe [LaCava] waving his hat. He was walking back to the other [Clark’s] caddie, then he turned and went back towards Rory, and that’s when I got pissed off.
RM: So Patrick holes the putt and Joe’s celebrating, and I think he lost control of where he was for a moment — or where he was in relation to my ball — but I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m like, ‘Right, I need to concentrate on this.’ I read my putt from behind the ball, then I go behind the hole, and as I’m walking back down the low side of my putt Joe is right in my way. I say, ‘Joe can you move please?’ And he’s been waving his hat, ‘We can celebrate too,’ he says. I said, ‘I don’t give a f**k if you celebrate, just do it over there.’ And I think that’s when Shane and the boys started chirping at him.
SL: I walked about five yards onto the green: ‘Joe! Get the f**k out of the way.’ And he turned around and started giving it to me. It was unbelievable to see someone like Joe doing that — if it had been my caddie I’d be fuming.
RM: Here’s what angered me. My relationship with Cantlay is average at best. We don’t have a ton in common and see the world quite differently. But when I saw he was getting stick on the 17th and 18th greens I tried to quieten the crowd for him. And I don’t think Fitz and I were afforded the same opportunity to try and hole those putts to halve the match. I hit a decent putt but I under-read it basically, and Fitz hit a good putt but left it short, right in the jaws.
SL: I think it put Fitzy off more than Rory. Matt Fitzpatrick hasn’t left a putt short in three years.
RM: I shook Joe’s hand, and Patrick’s hand. Those three putts he made on 16, 17 and 18 were fantastic, and under that pressure, to give your team a glimmer of hope going into Sunday was big balls. So all respect to him. There was a bit of argy-bargy at the back of the 18th green with Fred Couples and Thomas Bjorn — and that’s fine — but as I’m walking back to the locker room I can feel this red mist coming over me: ‘No! That wasn’t right.’
SL: It was mad. We were still five points ahead and yet it felt such a downer. I went into the locker room and started roaring and shouting. I was fuming. Fuming. Completely lost the plot. To be honest, I don’t want to talk about it, because nobody has talked about it.
RM: I think Shane has spent a lot of time around Peter O’Mahony and some of those Irish rugby boys, because he went on a rant in the locker room that was just unbelievable.
SL: It just came out of me. I can’t even remember what I said — a half-time in the dressing room kind of thing: ‘We’re five points clear … we’re in the driving seat … do what we have to do tomorrow and it’s game over.’ I talked about not just wanting to beat them, but to annihilate them. I wanted to get one back for Paddy [Pádraig Harrington] and beat them by more than they beat us at Whistling Straits. I think it went down pretty well.
RM: Everyone loved it, he was unreal, but as he was talking I was getting more and more riled up: ‘That was wrong. I was wronged.’ And as we’re getting up to leave I’m like, ‘I’m going into their locker room now to sort this out.’ And Shane was like, ‘No Rory. Bad idea.’
SL: I went upstairs and met Wendy. Then Rory came up with Erica. We had been travelling back to the hotel all week in separate cars but I said, ‘Come on, we’ll go back together.’ So we walked outside to get the car and Bones was coming towards us.
RM: He’s coming over to try and defuse the situation, but he’s wearing an American top, and I know he’s friends with Joe, and I just tripped. Complete rage.
SL: In the video, it looks like Rory is shouting at someone behind Bones but he’s not. He’s pointing: ‘I’m going to go into that f**king team room …’
RM: I felt bad about it afterwards because Bones’s wife was standing beside him, and I used a lot of swear words. So not my finest moment. Then Shane bundled me into the car.
SL: I was like, ‘Rors, get into the f**king car, will ya?’ Then I went to Bones and said: ‘You can tell your mate’ — because him and Joe are quite close — ‘that’s the worst thing I’ve seen on the golf course.’
RM: I sat in the back seat with Shane and Erica. Wendy sat in the front.
SL: Erica was unbelievable on the way back in the car, not just at calming him down but at getting him to refocus: ‘Right, when we get back to the hotel we need to just go to our rooms, have our dinner, and tomorrow you can let your clubs do the talking.’
RM: Shane says, ‘We’ll go down to the plunge pool first and have a chat.’
SL: Then we saw it. We were about 20 minutes into the drive and I was flicking through Instagram on my phone: “Oh f**k, Rory! There was a TV camera outside the clubhouse.’
Rory McIlroy argues with Joe LaCava, caddie of USA’s Patrick Cantlay, during the Ryder Cup in Rome. Photo: PA Wire
4. L and M
A defiant Harrington talked of sticking to the game-plan, claiming his team “did well” despite the USA taking control of the foursomes and heading into the second session, of fourballs, where both team captains utilised their full team list so that each and every one of the 12 players on either side got to play.
For Shane Lowry, that meant a debut match in partnership with McIlroy against Tony Finau and Harris English. The difficulty of physically negotiating the hilly terrain was shown by Lowry losing his footing on a sand hill on the sixth hole, his body sliding down the bank thankfully to no ill effect or injury.
But McIlroy — of the two — was the one who seemed deprived of energy, and indeed it was Lowry who assumed the on-course leadership role and offered the fist pumps and put his arm around his friend as they trooped off the ninth hole, two holes down at that point … It was the first time McIlroy suffered two defeats in one day in his Ryder Cup career.
Philip Reid, The Irish Times, September 25, 2021
On the first Wednesday of December in 2005, there was a short story in the Irish Independentabout the annual grants being awarded to our most talented amateur golfers by the Irish Sports Council. Rory McIlroy, a 16-year-old ‘phenom’ from Holywood in Co Down, was the top recipient at €5,000. Shane Lowry, a gifted 18-year-old from Clara in Co Offaly, would receive €1,500.
Eight months later, they travelled to the European Youth Team Championships in Spain and played together for the first time.
SL: My first memory of Rory is the Boys’ Interprovincials at Warrenpoint in 2005. He was playing number one for Ulster but I was nowhere near number one for Leinster, so I never got to play against him.
RM: My first memory of Shane would have been one of the those Boys’ International panel weekends with Neil Manchip [the national coach] at Carton House, and seeing this big fella with glasses and a great short game.
SL: I remember playing the West of Ireland and crowds following him around. He swung the club better than anyone else, even at that age, and always looked the part. I know Gerry [Rory’s father] was working his nuts off [to pay for it] but he had all the gear. He was this cocky little f**ker from the North [laughs], that’s how I would have seen it.
RM: I think the first time we played together was the European Youth Championships in Sotogrande in 2006.
SL: His parents were there. It was our first time to hang out. A year after that we won the European Team Championships at Western Gailes, then he played in the Walker Cup at Royal County Down and turned pro.
RM: I decide to turn pro and do my thing, and Shane is still playing amateur golf. Fast forward two years to the Irish Open at Baltray and he wins. Brilliant.
SL: We played a practice round together that week — he had won his first professional tournament that year in Dubai — and I remember him being in the media centre afterwards. “I’ll be seeing a lot more of you,” I said.
RM: He turned pro.
SL: Rory was top 50 in the world at the time, so we weren’t in a lot of the same events, but we’d always play a practice round together when we were. I remember playing nine holes with him the week he won the US Open at Congressional and feeling like a 10-handicapper walking off the course. I told Conor [Ridge, his manager at Horizon Sports]: “There’s no way he’ll finish outside the top five this week.”
RM: We were still pretty close up to that point.
SL: We were friendly, but I would have been closer to Peter Lawrie and Damien McGrane and Gary Murphy at the time. Rory was never a big man for socialising. He loved room service in the week of a tournament, and I was the complete opposite. He tells me stories now about when he was younger, and some of the nights he had with Harry and I’m like, “I never knew that side to you at all.”
RM: I joined Horizon in 2011, and we were being managed by the same agency. Then I fell out with Horizon in 2013. It had nothing to do with Shane, it was just … circumstances, and I felt aggrieved. And then I felt, not that he was choosing sides, but it got a bit …
SL: It was a shitshow, because Conor has always been good to me and it was almost as if I had to pick a side, so I was in a tough place with Rory. We went from friends to being acquaintances and it was just … awkward. I mean, I’m ‘L’ and he’s ‘M’ and our lockers were beside each other at every tournament!
RM: It was messy.
SL: I hate talking about it, and to be honest I’m happy Rory is not sitting here because I remember a practice round in Carnoustie before the Dunhill — it must have been 2014 — and seeing him on the tee, and waiting in the clubhouse until he was gone, which is bullshit when you think about it. I mean for f**k sake! Just shite!
RM: Then Shane won in Akron [the Bridgestone Invitational] in 2015. I’d ruptured a ligament in my left ankle and didn’t see him until a week later at the PGA Championship in Wisconsin, but I was really happy for him. The BBC Sports Personality of the Year was in Belfast that year. We went out for a few drinks afterwards and sort of cleared the air a bit.
SL: It was a good night. Pádraig was with us, and I remember we spoke about it briefly but it still wasn’t …
RM: We didn’t see each other that often. I was over here and Shane was still playing predominantly in Europe until 2018.
SL: We spent a few weeks in Orlando when we came over first, a beautiful place in Lake Nona, but it was just ‘golf’ in the middle of Florida [nothing else] and we hated it. [Jupiter] was the other option. It’s great for kids, you’re near the beach and there are world-class courses everywhere to play and practise. And yeah, Rory was here, but that wouldn’t have been a factor.
RM: Shane won the Open [at Portrush in 2019], and the next time I saw him was at the Northern Trust tournament in New York. We decided to go out for dinner. Erica and Wendy had never spent much time together but they got on so well and that was the foundation really. Our kids were a similar age … the girls enjoyed each other … and we started to become a lot closer. Then we went to the Olympics together.
SL: Rory gets a hard time in Ireland. He’s never in the conversation when people talk about our greatest ever sportsman, which is absolutely bonkers, because for me there’s no doubt. We had a great time in Tokyo. It felt like we were back playing amateur golf again and you should have seen how pissed he was not to win a medal.
RM: Shane had his brother on the bag and I had Harry. It was a nice week — a throwback to the amateur days.
SL: Then we played together at Whistling Straits, a low point for him, because he wasn’t playing great. It was my first Ryder Cup match and it was tough. I was trying to get him going, and get myself going, and it didn’t work out.
RM: I felt like I let Shane down.
SL: I remember we were sitting in the locker room on Sunday morning. He had been rested in the foursomes on Saturday for the first time ever in the Ryder Cup and was in a tough place. I said to him: “Rors, you need to remember who you are. You’re already one of the greatest players who’s ever lived and you’re not nearly finished.” And I don’t know whether that helped him or not but …
RM: I feel over the last couple of years that Shane’s been one of my biggest advocates. He’s a great person to be around, and a really good influence on me. There’s parts of Shane that I really love; I see how he lives his life; I see how he is with his girls, and the relationships he has with the people from home that are still close to him. He enjoys his life and everything he’s worked for, and I think spending time with him makes me a better version of myself
SL: We spent a great weekend in New York this year after the Masters. He’d missed the cut, and I was really struggling with my putting, and we both needed a break.
RM: It was our wedding anniversary, and we’ve done the last four or five years of our anniversary in New York. And Shane and Wendy were married there, so we said, “Why don’t we go up together and have a nice weekend without the kids?”
SL: We flew up with Rory. He booked the hotel and he booked all the restaurants, so we were calling him ‘Dad’ for the weekend. (Laughs)
RM: (Laughs) I think that was Wendy. We had a great time.
SL: We went up on Friday, had lunch, and did a bit of shopping with the girls. Then we went to see Bono [his one-man show at the Beacon] — that was really cool — and went for dinner afterwards. It was the first drink I’d had all year.
RM: We had breakfast on Saturday morning and the girls went shopping, so Shane and I decided to just meander through the streets for a couple of hours.
SL: We ended up in some bar, had a couple of drinks and met the girls for lunch.
RM: We ended up in two bars — one on the way to lunch, and one in the Meatpacking District on the way home from lunch.
SL: We were well on come dinner (laughs) — I’m not sure the girls were too impressed — but it was a great day. I said to Wendy that night: “It’s unbelievable how famous he is.” And it’s not that I didn’t know it, but when you’re walking around New York and there’s people shouting at you in the streets …
5. Saturday Night Fever
Blessed are the peacemakers, especially when they intervene during a car-park fracas that might be injurious to the dignity of all involved. Last week, that award went to golfer Shane Lowry, whose calming presence during a heated exchange at the Ryder Cup demonstrated an enviable sang-froid …
Alex Clark, The Observer
RM: We’re on our way back to the hotel in the car and it’s the first time since breakfast we’ve had a chance to look at our phones. I’m scanning through some messages. Shane’s on Instagram. “F**k, Rory,” he says, “there was a [tv] camera there!”
SL: We started laughing.
RM: We get to the hotel, and as you come into the lobby we go left to our wing of the hotel, and the Americans go right to their wing. So we’re going left and someone is shouting at me, ‘Rory! Rory!’, and I look back and it’s Ricky Elliott [the Portrush-born caddie of the American, Brooks Koepka] and Claude Harmon [Koepka’s swing coach]. And they’re trying to defuse the situation but I start having a go at them: “Joe LaCava used to be a nice guy when he was caddying for Tiger, and now he’s caddying for that dick he’s turned into a …” I still wasn’t in a great headspace.
SL: So I grabbed him: “Right! Plunge pool! We’ll go down and chill out.”
RM: I got down there a bit before him, and he got in and he’s like, “How long have you been here?” I said, “I’ve been in for four minutes.” He said, “Well, I’ll do four minutes.” I said, “I’ll stay in.” So I did an eight-minute cold plunge which is tough to do at six degrees or whatever temperature the water was, but it was nice because you automatically work on your breathing.
SL: I hate any of that stuff, but I had a bit of a problem around my left knee coming into the Ryder Cup and somebody told me the cold plunge would be good for it.
RM: We went for a bit of physio and had some dinner and the draw [for the singles] was out.
Match 1: Jon Rahm v Scottie Scheffler
Match 2: Viktor Hovland v Collin Morikawa
Match 3: Justin Rose v Patrick Cantlay
Match 4: Rory McIlroy v Sam Burns
Match 5: Matt Fitzpatrick v Max Homa
Match 6: Tyrrell Hatton v Brian Harman
Match 7: Ludvig Aberg v Brooks Koepka
Match 8: Sepp Straka v Justin Thomas
Match 9: Nicolai Hojgaard v Xander Schauffele
Match 10: Shane Lowry v Jordan Spieth
Match 11: Tommy Fleetwood v Rickie Fowler
Match 12: Robert MacIntyre v Wyndham Clark
SL: I looked at the sheet and thought, ‘F**k! Match 10! This could come down to me!’
RM: I thought it was a stroke of genius. Why? Because I usually play one or three, and if you look at where they placed Cantlay that’s probably what they expected, and it would stir the whole ‘Rory and LaCava’ thing again. Luke putting me at four was good tactics. He needed me to go out and just win a point, and it would be easier for me to win a point if I didn’t have that distraction.
SL: Then we had the team meeting.
RM: I forget what time it was called but Luke wasn’t back yet , he was doing media and stuff at the course. So we’re sitting there for about five minutes — the 12 players and the vice-captains — and all the talk is the video [laughs]. Then Luke comes in and sits down and doesn’t acknowledge anyone. And he looks at me and I’m thinking, ‘I could be in trouble here,’ but he goes, “Rory! I f**king loved that!” And all the boys started banging the table. It was brilliant. It had been a really deflating finish but it galvanised the team.
SL: Jon Rahm said to me: “Rory is some team-mate, isn’t he? He’s the best.” But I’d say the same about Rahmbo. Him and Rory are two of the best players in the world, but when they come into the team room at the Ryder Cup they’re just two of the lads. They leave their ego at the door.
RM: I went back to my room and there was a text from Joe LaCava: ‘Hey Rory, would love to meet up in the morning to clear the air.’ But I was tired and didn’t get back to him. There was also three texts and two missed calls from Tiger, because they’re obviously still close. I sent him a quick message: ‘It will be fine … long day … just want to go to bed.’
Next week: Ghosts of Medinah
