HAMILTON — Rory McIlroy was well gone, having gathered up his things, tipped his cap for the last time as the defending champion and was on his way to Toronto’s Pearson International Airport that Sunday night, but he couldn’t resist tuning in, eager to find out how one of the most electric golf tournaments in Canadian history played out.
The Irishman superstar’s work was done, and he had the U.S. Open to look forward to. Still, he had to know how the final few holes — a playoff between Nick Taylor of Abbotsford, B.C., and the decided crowd favourite, and McIlroy’s friend and Ryder Cup teammate, Tommy Fleetwood, the long-haired Englishman with the free-flowing swing — turned out.
McIlroy listened to the play-by-play drama on the car radio.
Mike Weir, the 2003 Masters champion who lost his best chance to win the RBC Canadian Open in the playoff to Vijay Singh in 2004, was having a nap at a friend’s house, having finished his round earlier in the day. He woke up in time to see Taylor making his move on the back nine and decided he had to get back to the course. He wanted to be there just in case history was being made.
“I was texting with my brother, I said, ‘Hey, I’m going to head over to the course, I just got a good feeling,’” Weir recalled. “So, I went back over there. … You could just, I don’t know, there was just a sense that something special was going to happen.”
Meanwhile, record numbers of viewers were tuning in, with Canadians the nation over riveted to find out if Taylor could complete his comeback after a desultory opening round and do what Canadian greats from Weir to George Knudson had never managed in their illustrious career: win their national open.
As for Fleetwood? He knows all too well how it turned out. He was standing on the 18th green at Oakdale Golf and Country Club with a 12-foot birdie putt that he was hoping would either win him the tournament or, at the very least, extend the playoff when Taylor’s snaking 72-footer — the longest made putt of the 36-year-old’s professional career — improbably dropped for eagle, the earth shaking as it did.
Fleetwood was the odd man out in the celebration that rocked Canadian sports, will be a cultural touchstone forever and counted only one casualty — fellow Canadian tour pro Adam Hadwin, who famously rushed onto the green to douse Taylor with champagne, only to be tackled and body-slammed by a zealous security guard who could only see that Hadwin wasn’t wearing the proper credential.
(Hadwin was fine; the green hoodie he was wearing is now part of the collection at the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame and Museum.)
While the chaos unfolded, Fleetwood resigned himself to another close-but-not-quite chance at earning his first PGA Tour win, the co-star moved off-stage at the award ceremony.
“I did an interview on the side of the green, then I went to the locker room, collected my things and I left,” Fleetwood said, laughing. “That’s just the nature of tournament golf. It wasn’t my time, it was Nick’s, and the whole of Canada had amazing moments to remember and cherish. Yeah, you play the tournament, when you’re finished you get your stuff, and you leave, and you go on to the next one. That’s just how it is. I flew to the U.S. Open and sort of tried to jump into that event as quickly as possible … once it’s done, that’s just the nature of the game, you pack up and leave.”
For Taylor and Canadians everywhere, this week is an opportunity to relive the moment, and relish that they’ve been left with something infinitely richer, better and longer lasting. Winning isn’t everything, but it can be a lot of things, and in this case, all of them great. Taylor’s winning putt ended a 69-year drought since a Canadian last won the national men’s championship, previously last accomplished by Pat Fletcher in 1954. It was named the sports moment of the year by the Toronto Star and the shot of the year on the PGA Tour.
A minor hockey player growing up, Taylor was surprised when Wayne Gretzky called and offered his congratulations as he was ordering a celebratory victory meal at a McDonald’s drive-thru. Just this week, the PGA Tour tracked down a Saskatchewan farmer who nearly fell out of the 13-foot-high cab of his weed sprayer because he got so excited while streaming the playoff win as he was working in his field. Everyone has a story, and Taylor gets to hear them everywhere he goes.
“That’s probably one of the coolest things probably in the past year, people just coming up and telling their story and the emotions that have been tied to it,” Taylor said. “… Where people really remember that moment. I don’t think I’ve probably fully grasped it yet, but it’s hard to think of words instead of, obviously, saying how cool it is, but I appreciate all the people that come up and tell those stories because it is a lot of fun to hear.”
The whole experience has melded into one, big, happy, haze for Taylor, who is finding even his personal recollections blending with the collective impressions of a moment that has been shared by the world, and Canadians especially.
“I think I remember most the controlled chaos of the scene. I think the putt, specifically of it going in, I feel like my distinct memory is seeing [his caddie, Dave Markle] charge at me, kind of his face. Then the rest of it is kind of a blur,” said Taylor Wednesday, as he prepared to defend his crown beginning Thursday morning at Hamilton Golf and Country Club. “I’ve seen the replay enough now that I kind of have that visual almost now instead of my own perception … I’ve seen so many angles … it’s really cool to see different people’s reactions. I feel when my wife and I see it, we find a different person to look at and see how they reacted, which is pretty fun.”
The whole experience — being a defending champion in your national open and earning the title in such landmark fashion — has been really fun.
It’s one of the underrated things about Taylor’s triumph: there have been no downsides, it has not gotten old.
It even delivered what is objectively or subjectively one of the coolest marketing gimmicks in the history of professional sports: when Taylor’s putt dropped, he made like Jose Bautista in Game 5 of the 2015 American League Division Series and flipped his putter. In December, Taylor’s putter flip was permanently incorporated into the tournament’s branding, with Taylor standing in for the letter ‘I’ in ‘Canadian’.
It’s everywhere on site here in Hamilton, it never doesn’t look fantastic.
“I think it’s unreal,” said Taylor Pendrith, one of the record 28 Canadians who are in the 156-man field this week and who will join Taylor and McIlroy in the marquee group when the tournament tees off. “It was an iconic moment and it’s pretty cool. Yeah, it’s really cool.”
Taylor had to run the risk of earning the nickname “Logo” among his peers on Tour, but it’s been well worth it.
Even among the vanquished, there are no hard feelings. The Open may not have the status on the Tour schedule it had in the past, but those who choose to play it seem to hold it in high regard. A two-time Canadian Open winner himself who won with a final-round 61 the last time the tournament was played in Hamilton, in 2019, even McIlroy can’t begrudge Taylor being the centre of attention this week, especially given that the pre-tournament coverage in both 2022 and 2023 was usurped by breaking news related to the LIV Golf-PGA Tour split that has been professional golf’s ongoing subplot.
A feel-good ending made everyone feel better.
“Full disclosure, I was hoping Tommy [Fleetwood] would get his first PGA Tour win, but Nick had other plans,” said McIlroy. “But, yeah, just absolutely incredible. The fact that a Canadian hadn’t won this national open in 60-something years, and the way that Nick did it, that putt at the end, the scene, like just all of it. The celebrations, Adam Hadwin getting absolutely smoked by the security guard, like just all of it was incredible.
“[And] this tournament deserved it, in all honesty. It deserved a finish like that because of not just what had happened at the start of the week last year, but also what had happened the week or the year previous as well, it deserved a finish like that. Even though Tommy didn’t win, I was so glad that it did end the way it did.”
Taylor — and a nation of sports fans — couldn’t agree more.