My son is 3 years old. He loves outer space and is obsessed with all of the planets. Other interests of his include animals (he loves the zoo or aquarium) and trains.
When he was not even a year old, my favorite baseball team, the Houston Astros, won the World Series. The night that it happened, my wife and I crept into his room, and I had her take a picture of me holding up my Jose Altuve jersey in front of his bed. I cherish that picture.
Sports have that kind of power. I will remember that moment from the night the Astros won the World Series in 2022 for general reasons, but also because of the fact that I partly shared it with my son. I don’t know the details, but I am certain that you have a story or two that ties an important moment in your life to an occasion in which a team of yours did something incredible. Hopefully it was a title!
These are the kinds of emotions that have been swirling in me all week as I have watched the 89th playing of The Masters. If you read our staff picks here at Playing Through then you know that I let my heart do the talking. I picked Rory McIlroy and ended my spiel like this:
The idea of Rory winning The Masters has always felt epic, and that idea still does in many ways. But what I have learned the most at this point in life is that I can experience that epic-ness in the journey, too. Picking Rory is always epic. It has resulted in only losses when it has come to Augusta, but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been epic.
Rory spoke this week and basically summed up my thoughts on life, golf, him and the word epic all at once. I have told myself many times that I will never pick him to win The Masters again because it feels so foolish on its face (those reasons are obvious, too).
But I want to pick Rory. That is what is epic for me now. And if I have learned anything as I mentioned it is that I am the author of what I feel is epic.
Rory McIlroy is going to win The Masters on Sunday. I said it. I believe it. I want it.
It is happening.
And here we sit.
It is Saturday night as I write and Rory holds a 2-shot lead over Bryson DeChambeau, the man who bested him at the U.S. Open last season. That fateful day at Pinehurst looked like it was finally going to be the day (THE DAY) that Rory put an end to his major championship drought that has now, amazingly, ballooned to over 10 years in size.
In that 10 years, and the major championship-filled part of Rory’s career that preceded it, I lived a lot of life. I met my wife, we moved around a bit, achieved personal and professional success (and had setbacks) and obviously had my son.
Rory has served as an undercurrent through so many pivotal moments in my life. As a 35-year old dude I have that in common with so many people. We have not walked the exact walk that he has, the lonely ones at Pinehurst or especially Augusta, but we have cheered and roared and been lost and defeated. Again… sports have that kind of power.
And here we sit.
This is the closest that Rory has been to slaying the dragon that has eluded him (and us) for this entire time. It isn’t just that he can break his major championship drought now, it is also that he can complete the career grand slam. Oh, it is also that he can finally etch his name among the most illustrious to have ever played this great game and won this prestigious tournament.
While I am a fan of the Houston Astros I am also a fan of the Dallas Cowboys (that is also the team I cover here at SB Nation and the thing I spend the most time obsessing over). Rory is fortunate in that his drought is only about a third the size of the Cowboys’ one and so I am quite used to staring out into the ocean from this island that I am trapped on. I have wondered for days and days and days that have turned into years and years and years (decades for the Cowboys) whether or not we will ever return to glory.
The great philosopher Papa Roach once said that we tear our heart open just to sew ourselves shut. He noted that our weakness is that we care too much.
We care too much. We care about Rory not because he is our favorite golfer or because he has been around for forever. We care about him because he has had his heart torn open and has had to sew back shut whether it was at Pinehurst last year, the Old Course in 2022 or whichever other moment out of the many options that you want to use as the example.
And here he sits. Rory is still standing. He is still fighting. He is still chasing. While he has failed and learned and evolved and grown we have all done so in our own individual ways in our own walks of life. We are not professional golfers looking to seal a win that immortalizes us in the game the way that he is, but we have experienced that same rise and fall in parallel with him for one collective journey.
Each of us has our own version of the 2011 Masters or 2022 Open or 2024 U.S. Open in how we have gotten here. To finish Papa Roach’s teachings, the scars from them remind us that the past is real. We needn’t run from it.
But we can learn from it and use it as we move forward in life, in whatever way that is for you and me. It just so happens that for Rory McIlroy it is in the final pairing of The Masters on Sunday afternoon with the guy who lifted his trophy back at Pinehurst.
However it goes… we will be going right there with Rory throughout it all.
