Written by Stephen Moloney (www.twitter.com/TheCheeky9)
As the worst night of the year to go out is finally upon us in all it’s overcrowded, sure-to-disappoint splendour, that, in turn, means we’re but a few hours away from it officially being a Ryder Cup year – and, given I got quite a large bottle of whiskey for Christmas, that’s a fact which I will, indeed, drink to.
What I’m also going to do, however – beyond getting a hair locked because I am very generous with my measures – is take another look at what potential rookie could be eyeing up 2020 as the year they take their first steps into the pantheon that is the Ryder Cup in nine months time on the shoreline of Lake Michigan; and, what better rookie to do that with, than the recently crowned ‘European Tour Rookie of the Year’, Robert MacIntyre.
To say it’s been a pretty productive three year spell for the 23 year old Scotsman would be like saying that I need to start cutting back a tad on the amount of whiskey I’ve been drinking since Christmas Day, i.e. it would be quite the understatement. Having reached the final stage of Q-School back in 2017 (after playing two tournaments on the MENA Tour, one of which he won, just after turning pro) a 37th place finish saw Robert earn a Challenge Tour Card for 2018. When he then finished 12th in the Challenge Tour Rankings come the end of that season (after posting no wins, but plenty of strong finishes) Robert, all of a sudden, now had a European Tour Card in his back pocket – or, to put it another way, European golf’s equivalent of a ‘Golden Ticket’ into “Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory”, except instead of possibly winning the deed to a confectionary factory if you survive the trap-laden tour put on by the somewhat murderous chocolate maker who owns it, you have the chance to fill your account with thousands of euro whilst, at worst, dealing with particularly fast greens and a higher-than-normal chance of getting sunburnt.
However, whilst the concept of “making it” on tour seems simple enough – make the cut = make the money – the reality of actually doing that is altogether far more complicated, hence why every single season a bevy of highly skilled golfers end up losing their cards and, like Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill in “21 Jump Street”, go back to school … Q-School … yes, that line does work.
Yet, for Robert, he took to the challenge of playing in the big time like a duck to water, making the cut in all but one of his first ten starts on tour and, come the end of the season, he’d only added another four missed cuts to that number – which, for a rookie on tour, is unbelievable playing.
What was probably most impressive about Robert’s debut season, though, is that he didn’t spend it just scraping into weekends and eking out whatever finish he could manage. From the 30 events that he played in, he amassed a record of 6 Top 20’s, 1 Top 25, 2 Top 30’s, 4 Top 10’s, 3 Runner-Ups and had an average finishing position of 36th, which, come the end of the DP World Tour Championship, was good enough to see him rack up an 11th place finish in the Race to Dubai rankings, a full 3 places clear of his nearest rival for the Sir Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year Award, Kurt Kitayama.
Of course, as much of a success as Robert’s debut season undoubtedly was, in the cold, grey light of a drizzly New Year’s Eve morning when you’ve gotten up stupidly early to write an article, I realised I needed to delve a little deeper into him as a player if I was to try and decipher what he could possibly bring to the table as a potential member of Pádraig Harrington’s Ryder Cup team beyond the fact that he did, indeed, have a good first season on tour.
Well, first and foremost, Robert’s stats are right up where they need to be. His average driving distance is 300.18 yards, 5 yards above the tour average, whilst his driving accuracy is pretty much bang on the tour average of 58%. He has a GIR % of 71.06, which is, again, above the tour average. And, perhaps most importantly, his stroke average last season was 69.98, a comfortable two shots lower than the tour average of 71.09 and enough to see him finish in 11th place on tour (McIlroy finished first with an average of 68.61). So, in short, Robert is plenty long off the tee, accurate with his irons and can score – tick, tick and tick.
Like a lot of European golfers who’ve come up through the amateur system over here, Robert has a rake of experience with team golf, with his final amateur appearance in the 2017 Walker Cup probably being his most notable performance as, though he lost the one foursomes match he played in, he went unbeaten in both of his singles matches against, none other than, two-time PGA Tour winner Cameron Champ – with the Scotsman clocking up an impressive 6&4 win over the long-hitter on Day 1 and halving their second encounter on the final day.
And, finally, what I think I like the most about Robert is just the overall attitude he seems to possess. In an interview he did back in October with John Huggan for ‘Golf Digest’ – which you can read right here – Robert offered what I think are two very important insights into how he approaches the game of golf. The first was how he admires the way in which Phil Mickelson plays golf, how he “… puts everything on the line, and that’s how I try to do it.” And the second was a story from the second stage of Q-School when hours before the first round, despite struggling massively with a huge slice whenever he pulled driver, he decided to just play with said slice and, in the end, wound up making it to the final stage on the number. And when you put both of those things together, what I think you end up getting is a picture of a fearless shotmaker who isn’t afraid to adapt on the spot and use whatever swing he has to try and get the job done … and if there’s a more perfect definition for what makes an ideal Ryder Cup player than that, I sure as hell would like to hear it.
Now, ultimately, there’s a long way to go before tickets and really nice jumpers start getting handed out for the trip to Wisconsin next September, so whilst Robert does find himself sitting in 11th & 13th place respectively in the European & World Points Lists in the rankings, he’ll know that if he wants to be one of the twelve striding out onto that first tee at Whistling Straits next year, he’ll have to not only try and recreate what he managed this season, but actually outdo it.
What he should find exciting, though, is that he’s more than capable of doing just that.
And I, for one, really hope the Oban native does manage it because, if by some string of extraordinary events a full-blown schmozzle breaks out between the American and European teams, given Robert’s extensive background in shinty, I want a seasoned ‘schmozzler’ right in there in the thick of it grabbing collars and asking the American players, “Who’s the rookie now?!” in a menacing Scottish accent …
Why, yes, I have already started toasting the New Year … what gave it away?