This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning.
Rory McIlroy has already done a lot in his incredible career. He’s won four major championships, he has 21 wins on the PGA Tour (which is one more than Greg Norman), and has had many huge moments in a bunch of Ryder Cups.
But this week he has the chance to do something special – he has the opportunity to become an absolute legend.
The world of men’s professional golf is a bit of a mess right now, with a bunch of mostly mediocre guys leaving the PGA Tour for the easy, and very dirty, money supplied by the Saudis on the empty LIV Golf exhibition tour.
McIlroy has long been against that tour and has stood up for the PGA Tour and for having the best players in the world all battling it out in the same place where the funds don’t come from a group of folks who executed 81 people just last March.
Rory made a big statement a few days ago by winning the Canadian Open and then taking a tremendous shot at Norman, the CEO and commissioner of LIV, just moments after his winning putt landed in the bottom of the hole.
Now McIlroy gets to take on all of the best players in the world at the U.S. Open, which starts Thursday at The Country Club in Brookline, Ma. A win here would be another massive shot at those who are taking off to pocket filthy money from killers and it would give the 33-year-old star even more of a platform to denounce those losers and stand up for what’s right.
Can you imagine the scene on 18 on Sunday if McIlroy is thrusting his arms into the air while celebrating his first major championship victory since 2014? It would be not only incredible for him, but gigantic for a game that is in serious trouble right now thanks to all that dirty money being thrown around.
McIlroy knows what’s at stake this week and you have to believe he wants this one more than any of the other majors that he’s played in since he won the PGA Championship back in 2014. He knows who powerful a victory in Brookline would be. And he knows he has a lot of people pulling even harder for him this week.
A win on Sunday would make him a legend for all the right reasons.
Quick hits: Jordan Poole’s terrible flop… Wiggins’ monster night had fans in awe… Steph Curry wears shirt to support his wife… And more.
– The Warriors beat the Celtics in Game 5 of the NBA Finals last night and everyone ripped ref Tony Brothers for this awful call on an obvious flop by Jordan Poole.
– Andrew Wiggins had a monster night for the Warriors and lots of NBA fans were rightfully in awe of his performance.
– Speaking of the Warriors, Steph Curry wore a shirt after Game 5 defending his wife Ayesha after Celtics fans said she couldn’t cook.
– A sports anchor in Mississippi roasted the Dallas Cowboys during a weather report.
