Rory McIlroy ≠ Tiger Woods

Not yet, anyway.

McIlroy just won the Honda Classic in convincing fashion, with a charging Tiger Woods running out of holes and thus coming up two strokes short in his comeback bid. As Rory was finishing up his victory, as this tournament is at a very prominently Jack Nicklaus-designed course and Jack had been in the broadcast booth earlier, Johnny Miller mused about whether we might one day watch McIlroy mount a serious challenge to Jack's record of 18 major championship victories. More broadly, the day was in large part a comparison between the greatest player of the generation whose era is currently fading and the (anticipated) greatest player of the generation whose era is currently just beginning. But I think it's worth pointing out that, although Rory McIlroy appears to be a very good player and although when he's playing well he looks like he's playing about as well as anyone, that he's not Tiger Woods. He's not even Tiger Woods at the equivalent stages of their careers.



In two months exactly, Rory McIlroy will turn 23 years old. To date, he has six professional victories: one dominant victory in a major, two other PGA Tour wins, two European Tour wins, and one win in a tournament not aligned with any major tour. He also has five wins dating from his amateur career, four of which were specific to Ireland and one of which was the European Amateur. All of that is quite impressive, and it's a hell of a lot more winning than I or just about anyone else on the planet has done by the age of 22 years, 10 months.

But by that same age, Tiger Woods had won a whole lot more. Like McIlroy, he had one dominant performance in a major to his name, although that one was a twelve-stroke victory and he didn't have any history of blowing leads in majors (something he wouldn't do until the age of 34). But he had six other PGA Tour wins, one European Tour win, and one Asian Tour win to go with that major. And as an amateur, he had won six Junior World Golf Championships, including four consecutive; three U.S. Junior Amateur Championships, consecutively; and three U.S. Amateur Championships, consecutively. Considering the Juniors Worlds, the U.S. Junior Amateur, and the U.S. Amateur to each represent age-appropriate national amateur championships, Tiger entered his first full year as a professional with a string of nine consecutive years winning at that level.

Oh, and McIlroy's been a professional for nearly four-and-a-half years. That same length of time into Tiger's professional career would put us in very early 2001, when he had five majors racked up already, nineteen other PGA Tour wins, three European Tour wins, etc., and was in the middle of a string of six consecutive tournament victories. He had just come off arguably the best year of professional golf ever, winning three majors in a row (he would soon add a fourth), nine PGA Tour events on the year, more money by a lot than anyone had ever won in a year, never finished out of the top 25, etc.

Rory McIlroy, in other words, is very good. But there's a big gap between "very good" and "Tiger Woods," and that gap had already showed up by the time Tiger was as far through his career or his life as McIlroy is now. I think Rory will spend many weeks as World #1, I think he'll win many tournaments and lots of majors, I think he'll probably be the best European golfer since Harry Vardon. But all of that still doesn't put him in Tiger's league.

And I have a feeling that, starting next week, Tiger's going to remind him of that fact.