Rory McIlroy is straddling two continents, two tours and two colliding worlds — the celebrity and the secular. It is a lot to balance, and this year he has sometimes staggered under the weight of expectations, even taking up juggling at the advice of a doctor friend, who suggested it as a stress-relieving, focus-sharpening exercise.
After he pored over YouTube instructional videos, McIlroy took three balls and “literally spent all night juggling,” he said. By the next morning, he could complete 10 cycles without dropping a ball. If only life itself was that simple.
Still, McIlroy strides ahead, seeking to be both a performer on the world’s stage and a person fully engaged with the world. Instead of some monastic routine when he is competing — room-service chicken every night, egg whites each morning and nothing but golf in between — McIlroy tries to revel in what the rest of life offers. He plays soccer with friends — or he used to until he ruptured a ligament in his left ankle on the field — orders a glass of wine at dinner while trying trendy restaurants and generally seems more intent on building a life instead of just a legacy.
“I don’t want this to define who I am,” McIlroy said, referring to his golf career. “And some people have let that happen. I get it. If I am as good as I want to be, people will just see me as a golfer and that’s totally fine. But I guess I just never want to see myself as that.”
McIlroy won’t turn 30 until May, but he already has been through a closet full of identities: prodigy, political pawn, half of a power couple, United Kingdom golf royalty, and the one that never was a comfortable fit, the next Tiger Woods. McIlroy turned pro at 18, and by his 23rd birthday he had run away with a United States Open in Tiger-esque fashion and had collected six professional victories worldwide, including one major, two fewer than Woods at the same age.
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