{"id":918496,"date":"2026-11-15T19:38:15","date_gmt":"2026-11-15T19:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/918496\/"},"modified":"2026-11-15T19:38:15","modified_gmt":"2026-11-15T19:38:15","slug":"this-ones-for-him-rory-mcilroy-emotionally-dedicates-race-to-dubai-win-to-ailing-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/918496\/","title":{"rendered":"‘This one’s for him’: Rory McIlroy emotionally dedicates Race to Dubai win to ailing dad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rory McIlroy was understandably emotional when talking about how much winning a record-tying eighth Race to Dubai title<\/a> meant to \u201ca proud European.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it was a question about his father, Gerry, that choked up the 37-year-old.<\/p>\n

DP World Tour reporter Tim Barter asked a victorious McIlroy, \u201cYou father is recovering from health issues over in America. How much was he in your thoughts today?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot,\u201d McIlroy responded, rubbing the side of his face, his voice becoming shaky. \u201cYeah, a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been in the hospital for the last two months. Underwent a huge operation at the end of September and he\u2019s recovering well, thankfully,\u201d McIlroy added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I left to come up here to the Middle East, I went up to Cleveland to see him and he said to me, \u2018Go win the Race to Dubai.\u2019 And uh …\u201d<\/p>\n

With that, McIlroy tried his best to not break down and Barter helped him by saying how proud Gerry would be of his son, and ending the interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d McIlroy said, \u201cthis one\u2019s for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

After receiving his eighth RTD trophy, tying him with Colin Montgomerie on the all-time list<\/a>, McIlroy went deeper during his full-media press conference on his father\u2019s condition.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s obviously been difficult. I mean, he\u2019s been living with this for a while, for 18 months, and it got to the point where the last resort was he needed a transplant. So he had a double-lung transplant in September. Thankfully, operation was a success and he\u2019s recovering well,\u201d McIlroy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, it\u2019s been a stressful time for our family. I\u2019ve been up in Cleveland a lot because that\u2019s where he is. I didn\u2019t know if I was going to go to India because I spent nine days in the ICU with him while he was recovering. You know, if things were not looking as good as they were, I probably wouldn\u2019t have felt comfortable travelling or being too far away.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut he\u2019s got an amazing team up there, and the doctors and nurses are absolutely incredible. So I felt comfortable going to India and travelling and knowing that I could obviously get back to him if I needed to, but he was obviously in wonderful hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been making a really steady recovery. I went up to see him before I left for Abu Dhabi a couple of weeks ago, and he said to me, \u2018Rors, go and win me the Race to Dubai.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cSo that was, you know \u2014 that was in my head for the last two weeks, and I really wanted to do it for him and I know he\u2019s in hospital in his hospital bed, and he would have been watching this morning. It was nice to be able to get it done for him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy was understandably emotional when talking about how much winning a record-tying eighth Race to Dubai title…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":918497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-918496","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\/918496","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=918496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}