Rory McIlroy wasn’t happy. He was 17. He’d just won the Mullingar Scratch Cup, making him perhaps the best amateur golfer in the world. And then on the drive home he broke into tears. These weren’t tears of joy; he wasn’t worried about future pressure. He cried because he felt empty inside. He thought he’d find some kind of enlightenment with that big trophy; instead, he just found more space within his own head. He’d grown tired and frustrated with the game. He told his parents he wanted to quit.
He didn’t feel the way he thought he would feel. He wondered whether maybe he should be meeting girls, hanging out with friends, getting drunk. Teen stuff.
And Rory’s parents weren’t determined to change his mind, even after all the sacrifices they had made to get him there. (Rory’s father, Gerry, tended bar at the local golf club and held a second job as a cleaner; his mother, Rosie, worked the night shift at a 3M plant outside Belfast.) They just wanted their son to be happy. If he wanted to quit, that was fine. He had been a child prodigy, swinging a golf club on television for an adoring and hopeful crowd, not because he was raised to be a killer, but because he just liked chipping golf balls into the family washing machine.
