Europe held off a stirring final day fightback from the United States to win 15-13 in New York in September.<\/p>\n
McIlroy was the centre of attention for a hostile home crowd with incessant abuse with a beer even thrown at his wife Erica McIlroy, which hit her on the hat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got a lovely e-mail from Derek Sprague apologising,\u201d McIlroy told the BBC ahead of the Abu Dhabi Championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cErica worked with Derek at the PGA of America back in the day, so we know Derek and his wife pretty well.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe couldn\u2019t have been more gracious or apologetic and he wrote us a lovely letter, which we really appreciated.\u201d<\/p>\n
McIlroy at times hit back at the crowd but said the abuse backfired as it \u201cgalvanised\u201d the European players to become the first side to win the Ryder Cup on foreign soil for 13 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI take it as a compliment that they targeted me, but then at the same time, it was a tough week,\u201d added the world number two.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat made us better as a team. It galvanised us and it really put our arms around each other.\u201d McIlroy can cap a dream year with a fourth DP World Tour Championship in Dubai later this month.<\/p>\n
He ended an 11-year wait to win a major by claiming his first Masters in dramatic fashion in April and also won the Irish Open, Players\u2019 Championship and Pebble Beach Pro-Am.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew a year like this was possible, but it has just been an amazing 10 months,\u201d said the five-time major champion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Europe held off a stirring final day fightback from the United States to win 15-13 in New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[2620,64,63,11387,155538,102760,5951,114330,51337,155541,755,155540,155537,155539,1025,51334,84837,85,155536,2614],"class_list":["post-266127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-agence-france-presse","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chief-executive","tag-derek-sprague","tag-dp-world","tag-dubai","tag-erica-mcilroy","tag-european-players","tag-final-day-fightback","tag-golf","tag-hostile-home","tag-lovely-e-mail","tag-lovely-letter","tag-new-york","tag-pebble-beach-company","tag-ryder-system","tag-sports","tag-stirring-final-day","tag-united-states-of-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}