Of all the various strains of the Rory McIlroy narrative being teased out over his four-day coronation as the New Tiger, you hear very little about McIlroy's working class roots. If McIlroy seems a bit out of place within modern golf culture, it's because he is. Read this Daily Mail profile from 2009. McIlroy's dad worked the bar at the Holywood Golf Course - working 100 hour weeks for about 4 years, pouring pints and cleaning toilets - while his mother worked night shifts in a factory to get McIlroy's fledgling golf career. As Gerry McIlroy says, "I am a working-class man and that’s all I knew to get the money we needed for Rory to be able to learn and compete at golf."
Maybe golf today doesn't seem as riven by class difference as it would have a generation ago, but it in many places, it still lingers (check out what the Marriott kids have been getting up to at the Congressional this week). I'm sure that toilet cleaning will be worth it if/when Rory lifts the US Open trophy later today.
