Rory McIlroy at 2011 US Open

Rory Mcllroy












As Rory Mcllroy breaks all kinds of US Open records after three rounds, there is one record that he won't be able to break - the youngest to ever win the US Open. Since McIIroy is 22 years old, he will be second after John McDermott won the 1911 US Open at the age of 19.

Those who say, before he even won a major tournament, that the young Irishman could be the greatest ever, only have to look at what happened to McDermott, who they said the same thing about a hundred years ago, but who was done playing by the time he was 22.

Although there were three or four articles about in major mainstream publications, the TV and radio announcers couldn't help but trip over themselves making comparisons to a young Tiger Woods (Celtic Tiger) and Bobby Jones, but couldn't seem to be able to mention John McDermott, who still holds the record as the youngest to have ever won the open.

McDermott did it when he was 19 years old, and he did it almost a hundred years to the day of McIlroy's extraordinary accomplishment.

But when McIlroy was walking down the 18th fairway at the end of the final round, the TV flashed a list of the half-dozen twenty something golfers who won the US Open since the end of World War II, and National Public Radio announced that McIlroy was the youngest to have won the US Open since Bobby Jones did it in 1923 when he was 22.

Then the AP writer Doug Ferguson had to really stretch things when he wrote, "McIlroy became the second youngest player to win a major since the Masters began in 1934."

But why stop at World War II? Why stop at Bobby Jones? Why not take it back to the youngest to have ever won the US Open, John McDermott?

That is the same trophy isn't it? The one in the hands of McIlroy and sitting next to McDermott?