McIlroy Charts a New Path, Again
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Version 0 of 1. Three years after he won his first PGA Tour title, Rory McIlroy returned last month to Quail Hollow, the scene of that inaugural victory, as the recently dethroned world No. 1 in search of his game and his first win of the new season. The simplicity that characterized McIlroy’s swing thoughts and his life in 2010 was a bygone memory, so he was asked what sticks out in his mind when he looks back at the 20-year-old who won for the first time on tour. “I was chubby,” McIlroy replied with a laugh. McIlroy’s streamlining measures did not begin and end with toning his physique. After shedding body fat, a move he credited with helping him win five worldwide titles in 2012, McIlroy has shrunk his circle of advisers to a bare-bones group of friends and family members. In a move first reported by The Irish Independent and confirmed Friday in Bulgaria by McIlroy’s good friend Graeme McDowell, McIlroy is leaving the Dublin-based Horizon Sports Management to form his own management company in which his father, Gerry, will figure prominently. The move comes after Horizon completed three blockbuster endorsement deals this year, with Nike, Bose and Omega, and less than two months after McIlroy offered an emphatic denial that anything was amiss in his relationship with the company. At the Houston Open in March, McIlroy was walking from the driving range to the parking lot, his workday done, when he was asked about speculation in Ireland of a growing rift between his father and Conor Ridge, a founder of Horizon Sports. Without hesitation, McIlroy replied: “No. Not at all.” At the Players Championship last week, McIlroy again denied that he was considering leaving Horizon. McIlroy could not be reached on Friday, and Ridge said in an e-mail that the agency “was not in a position to comment.” McIlroy, 24, is quick with a smile, but his affability is not without limits. Once he sets his path, he is not always open to directions from others. McDowell, another Horizon client, described McIlroy as hardheaded and scoffed at the idea that he led McIlroy to Horizon, explaining, “He’s very much his own man.” Is McIlroy’s breakaway from Horizon the inevitable result of another awkward growth spurt of a budding superstar, or is it another dot to connect in an emerging pattern of impulsiveness? Since his breakout victory at Quail Hollow, McIlroy has made so many changes it leads one to wonder if all his tinkering could end up altering his wholesome image and homespun game. Four months after winning the 2011 United States Open, McIlroy left the monolithic International Sports Management, headed by the larger-than-life Chubby Chandler, for the smaller Horizon agency led by the low-key Ridge, in a move that could be explained away as an embrace of his Irish roots and small-town sensibilities. Last year McIlroy placed his home in Belfast on the market and bought a house in Florida, which could be attributed to his desire to streamline his travel schedule. In January, fresh off winning the money titles on the PGA and European Tours, McIlroy abandoned the Titleist clubs that had been as good as gold in his hands and signed a multiyear deal with Nike worth at least $100 million. At the time, it was roundly viewed as the next logical step in the global expansion of his brand. In March, McIlroy walked off the course midway through the second round of the Honda Classic, where he was the defending champion but well above the cut line, because of painful wisdom teeth, an act seen at the time as an uncharacteristic lapse in judgment. He is without a victory in eight PGA starts and one European tournament in 2013. McDowell, speaking to reporters from Bulgaria, site of this week’s World Match Play Championship, described McIlroy’s departure from Horizon as “fairly amicable.” He added: “Management is a funny thing, and when things are maybe not going 100 percent on the golf course it’s natural to question everything you are doing from relationships, business and just everything you do. Sometimes we decide to make choices and decisions and take new paths.” McIlroy’s decision to put his business affairs in the hands of family is not without precedent. When the tennis player Roger Federer, a 17-time Grand Slam champion, was at roughly the same stage in his career as the 24-year-old McIlroy, he entrusted his business dealings to his parents and his future wife, Mirka. His affairs are now in the hands of his longtime agent, Tony Godsick, with whom he stayed after Godsick left I.M.G. Another example is Adam Scott, the reigning Masters champion, who went through a series of advisers before starting his own management company headed by his father, Phil. The week before the Masters, on the eve of the announcement of his latest endorsement deal with the Swiss watchmaker Omega, McIlroy spoke of wanting to follow Federer’s lead of developing long-term relationships with a few high-quality sponsors rather than pursue endorsement dollars at the expense of working on his game. Sean O’Flaherty, a Horizon employee who was with McIlroy during his last two starts, said McIlroy was not a passive presence in the business arena. “He calls all the shots,” O’Flaherty said last month. “He’s the boss.” In opting to officially become his own boss, McIlroy has positioned himself so that moving forward, for better or worse, he will have to account for his actions. |