Rory Mcilroy’s pre-triavi press scrums still one of the hottest golf tickets

Oakmont, without. – Rory Mcilroy’s press conference was scheduled to begin on 1st on Tuesday, but it started five minutes earlier. The tent was packed, and Rory was in his reversible seat, in a riser, after a hotel table, about three meters above sea level – on writers and bloggers and shooters and others. Why push the joy?

ABOUT Tiger In half retirement, the best show before the tournament in the city — name your city-is Rory Mcilroy press conference. He is there to sell himself, Nike and this game he plays for fame and glory. We look at it, before, during and after, hoping that some of them, golf’s ability and golf magic, will rub us. We pay for the privilege. He is paid. There is no product here, but it is not a game of zero amounts. If it were, you would read something else now, and not watch NBC on Sunday afternoon, Brad Faxon and Peeps.

He is a startling speaker good, in many cases when Rory Mcilroy decides to speak. ( PGA championship Last month, in Quail Hollow, it was, as noted, a kind of “strange week”. You can say he made it one, with his silence on the radio.)

In his generation, as a speaker, Rory Mcilroy is without his peer. A half-generation in front of him, had a large three plus-four speakers in his class if not better: Padraig Harrington, Phil Mickelson and Colin Montgomerie. Before those Gents had the original Big Big of the Golf-On-TV era, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and L. Trevino. Since he was young, Mcilroy played for the crowded crowds.

On Tuesday, in the USGA Cisco -sponsored interview tent (only Loos are not for sale), there were about 40 places in Infield, slightly under the Mcilroy scene. Every last place is occupied. The wings, on the left and right, were crowded. Beyond the places, there were some other dozen that stood at high tables, suitable for cocktails and snacks, but here they carry cell phones and notebooks, though they are not the key element they once were. A USA media official, Julia Pine, sitting to Mcilroy’s right, told volunteers who handed over the microphone to each reporter chosen to ask a question. The protocol for reporters is to ask a question, with a rapid tracking permitted. Customs, almost no one asks personal questions. I will neither give you an example of the most personal question anyone can do because THAT It’s very personal. Golf is different. It is simply.

Jenna Harner was there to ask Mcilroy a question in Pittsburgh. Harner is a sports anchor and reporter for NBC associate in Pittsburgh, WPXI. It is regular in stelers games, in Pirates games, in penguin games. This US Open is its first major golf championship. It led to work – Oakmont country club – with butterflies in her stomach and hint of ambivalence. Stelers were spending the first day of Minicamp on Tuesday and Aaron Rodgers were making his debut as Stelers’ new defender. So talking about sports in one of America’s big sports cities, a big kind.

But the chance to see Rory Mcilroy personally shocked everyone. She got into everything that was happening in Minicamp, but she was hanging in every word of Mcilroy. He pronounced about 2,000 of them during his 15-minute interview within the tent of interview with Cisco and two thousand others outside him, with interviews on radio and others. If you tighten all those words together, you will have a long part of the magazine. look is one of his words to go. Also So yes. The words flow without effort, and his ideas are often original. “You dream of the last blow that enters the masters, but you don’t think about what comes next,” he said, explaining the unknowns who have come on his way these last two months.

Outside, almost against a fence, Mcilroy answered questions from two radio reporters he has known to return from the United Kingdom for years. A dozen or more reporters formed a heavy half -circle behind them. One child looked at a small gap on the fence to see what was going on. Harner, the local sports anchor, was looking carefully, trying to catch Mcilroy’s eye and enter there with a question. It didn’t happen.

“Everyone else will ask him about his golf and the course and all this, but I wanted to ask him for Pittsburgh and fans here,” Harner said.

She didn’t get the chance. This is a regular thing, at a press conference Rory Mcilroy. They always have questions on the floor of the cutting room.

Mcilroy asked a question about his comfort in these environments, talking about himself and the game he plays. “I love myself and I love golf, so I’m very comfortable talking about both those things,” he said. “I think you will always be really comfortable talking about topics you feel like you know a lot, and I think I know a lot about golf, and especially my golf. There is no better man to tell you about my game and what I’m thinking and how I feel me.

“I’ve always tasted it. I have always liked to talk about the game.”

Bryson Dechambeau came next. He won last year’s US Open, you can remember, from a shot over Mcilroy. He entered at 2pm he was really good, interesting, attractive, not moving through any way. But the tent was half -filled, if that. Rory Mcilroy had left the building and dozens of reporters followed it.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments in Michael.bamberger@golf.com