Too early to compare Rory McIlroy to Tiger Woods – Paul McGinley

Phil Casey 15:01 07/04/2015
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  • Pretender to the crown: Rory McIlroy (r) has taken over from Tiger Woods as golf’s leading player, but Paul McGinley believes he is some way off matching his level of dominance.

    Former Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley believes Rory McIlroy has a long way to go before he deserves to be compared to Tiger Woods.

    The two players head to Augusta for the Masters in starkly contrasting form, with McIlroy needing to win a first green jacket to complete the career grand slam and Woods having only confirmed his participation in the year’s first major championship on Friday.

    Woods has started just two events in 2015, shooting a career-worst score of 82 to miss the cut in the first of them and withdrawing through injury after just 11 holes of the second.

    However, McGinley experienced first hand how much Woods dominated the game in the early part of his career to amass 14 major titles, including the ‘Tiger Slam’ of US Open, Open Championship and US PGA in 2000, as well as the 2001 Masters to hold all four major titles at once.

    “Rory is evolving as a player and he’s evolving as a person too. He’s not the finished article,” McGinley said.

    “Even now at 25 it’s not right to compare him to Tiger Woods.

    “What Tiger Woods has done in his career is a yardstick. Rory is still evolving towards that and every year he is getting better and better, but he still has a long way to go to meet the standards that Tiger set.

    “Also, the great thing about Tiger was the way and the varying conditions that he won in.

    “You see him win at Augusta obviously, but you see him winning at the Open in Hoylake (in 2006), on a firm, bouncy golf course.

    “He showed two disciplines there; he showed massive ball control, but secondly to be able to play an examination paper like Hoylake, it’s all about patience. And he exemplified that there.

    “And that’s one of the things that Rory knows he has to improve, that level of patience, if he wants to evolve to the heights that Tiger set.”

    McIlroy’s lack of patience got the better of him when he threw his three iron into a lake at Doral following a poor shot in the WGC-Cadillac Championship in March, with the pressure of Augusta perhaps already beginning to tell.

    The world number one is well aware he is on the verge of joining Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Woods in an exclusive club by winning all four majors, but McGinley believes he does have one thing in his favour.

    “What’s been clever about what Rory’s done is that he hasn’t put a number on the number of majors he wants to win,” added McGinley, 

    “He’s not chasing anybody’s record. And that’s been very clever.

    “To a large extent I wonder if that has hindered Tiger more than anything else, because everyone is relating him to Jack Nicklaus (Nicklaus has 18 majors, Woods 14). 

    “And if he doesn’t reach Jack Nicklaus’ level then some people will say, ‘Well he didn’t get quite as good as Nicklaus’. And that would be a shame. 

    “Rory hasn’t done that, he’s just said I’m going to keep on playing and whatever number of titles I end up with at the end of my career, I end up with.”

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