For the time being, there are more achievable goals that would serve to underline McIlroy’s greatness.<\/p>\n
“He wants to be known as the greatest European of all-time,” said former European Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley.<\/p>\n
Current skipper Luke Donald has already declared McIlroy as top of the pile.<\/p>\n
Winning back-to-back Masters moved him alongside England’s Sir Nick Faldo on six majors and one clear of Spain’s Seve Ballesteros.<\/p>\n
Jersey’s Harry Vardon remains clear of the modern-era set after winning seven majors between 1896 and 1914 – a record six Opens and one US Open in a time before the US PGA Championship and Masters existed.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, there is already a compelling argument that McIlroy is the greatest player to emerge from Europe.<\/p>\n
It could not be credibly disputed on the basis of the statistics if he draws level with or eclipses Vardon.<\/p>\n
McIlroy has won 30 times on the PGA Tour – long established as the strongest test of a player’s ability – including two victories at the US-based tour’s flagship Players Championship.<\/p>\n
Outside his three Masters and three Open titles, Faldo won only three other events that count on the PGA Tour, although he played in a different time when the European Tour was stronger.<\/p>\n
McIlroy is also homing in on a record eighth victory in the European tour’s season-long race.<\/p>\n
Last season he clinched a seventh Race to Dubai title – his fourth in succession – to eclipse Ballesteros’ tally of six and leave him one behind Colin Montgomerie’s record.<\/p>\n
“As much as many of us might think that he’s already Europe’s best ever, he didn’t have as many major championships as Nick Faldo or Harry Vardon,” added McGinley.<\/p>\n
“Even though he has caught Nick he hasn’t caught Vardon. There’s always another level to reach and I think he has reset his goals in that regard.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the time being, there are more achievable goals that would serve to underline McIlroy’s greatness. “He wants…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-581652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}