“The boys are calling him Rocky McIlroy” – how Lowry calmed McIlroy down after car-park confrontation

Niall McIntyre

Rory McIlroy has apologised to Justin Thomas’ caddie Jim ‘Bones’ Mackay for his car-park outburst on Saturday evening.

Mackay was just ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ according to McIlroy who, after winning his fifth Ryder Cup with Europe, confirmed that Bones was just the ‘first American’ he saw after leaving the locker room.

Joe LaCava, on the other hand, was the man who had stoked the fire.

LaCava, caddie of Patrick Cantlay, drew the ire of the county Down golfer by waving his cap before McIlroy’s Saturday night putt on the 18th.

Early the next day, McIlroy confirmed on NBC that he hadn’t spoken with LaCava since the night before but, late on Sunday, with the Ryder Cup trophy secure, he clarified that they had exchanged texts.

“We’ve texted,” Rory told reporters.

“We haven’t seen each other face-to-face. But we’ve texted. So everything will be fine.

“It’s still a point of contention and it still hurts but time is a great healer and we’ll all move on,” he added.

“I texted Bones this morning too, he was just the first American I saw after I came out of the locker-room, so he was the one that took the brunt of it.

“He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I text Bones this morning and apologised for that.”

Shane Lowry has been outside enough Offaly nightclubs at 2 in the morning to know how to get a lad in a taxi and defuse a situation efficiently. This is experience https://t.co/871O2KS9bJ

— Minister for Spuds at the Dept of Bacon & Cabbage (@FCTwenteBenson) September 30, 2023

Nobody was safe on Saturday. Indeed, McIlroy confirmed that it was the ‘angriest’ he had ‘ever been’ in his career after what he described as LaCava’s ‘disgraceful’ antics.

For that, it took Shane Lowry and a hotel plunge pool to cool him down.

“I was hot coming out last night. I was pretty angry and I didn’t agree with what happened at 18, but it focused me and I let it fuel my fire today.

“I’m relieved (Shane bundled me into the car,) then he took me down to the cold plunge pool in the hotel and let me cool off for a few minutes there too.”

On the subject of a car-park scrap, Lowry interjected that he would have been left to do the heavy lifting. Rory was just relieved it didn’t come to that. Justin Rose, in the mean-time, has given him a new nick-name.

“The boys are calling him Rocky McIlroy,” he joked.

Bring on Bethpage 2025!