Lost in Spieth's Shadow, Rory McIlroy out to Prove He's Still Best in the World

By the end of 2015, Rory McIlroy had become lost in the shadows of Jordan Spieth mania. This is of course understandable as Spieth put together one of the most impressive seasons in recent memory, while McIlroy spent the second half of 2015 recovering from an ankle injury.

But in this instantaneous what have you done for me lately world, many seem to have long forgotten exactly what McIlroy is capable of when firing on all cylinders.  

It was not long ago that McIlroy had won two consecutive major championships to close out the 2014 season and was considered to be far and away the best golfer on the planet. The 26-year-old native of Northern Ireland had also carried at least some of his 2014 form into 2015, racking up three wins, including a WGC event, before going down with a torn ligament in his left ankle suffered during an amateur soccer game in June.

Once McIlroy was finally able to return to action at the PGA Championship, it was clear that the extended period of time away from the game had impacted his ability to perform at the highest level.

But in the weeks following his return to professional golf, McIlroy slowly began shaking the rust off of his game.

He tied for fourth at the BMW Championship, tied for sixth at the Turkish Airlines Open and then went on to win the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai last November.

“It was the first time since the injury that I got a bit of speed back in my swing,” McIlroy said of his win in Dubai (as reported by James Corrigan of the Telegraph). “I was hitting it long, and I finally was playing how I wanted to play again. There’d been progress, but it just sort of all came together in Dubai and it makes me excited about next year.”

This April McIlroy will not only be competing for his fifth major title at Augusta National, he will be attempting to win the career grand slam, a feat achieved by just five men since 1930.

If McIlroy, who has finished within the top 10 at each of his last two Masters appearances, manages to capture the green jacket in April, he will join Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Gene Sarazen and Tiger Woods as the only players to have won the modern day professional career grand slam.

That is some hefty company that McIlroy’s name would appear alongside of.

“A lot of the goals will be of a similar nature to the ones I set out last year,” McIlroy said (as reported by Corrigan of the Telegraph). “Obviously Augusta is important, and I will be playing two extra events leading up to it. I want to get in a full rhythm where it doesn’t feel like the start of the season but feel like I’m 'played in.'”

McIlroy will begin his 2016 season this week at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship, which is a tournament that will also be attended by current world No. 1 Spieth, who is coming off an impressive eight-stroke victory at the Hyundai Tournament of Champions.

While McIlroy and Spieth are widely considered to be the top two players in golf today, they possess vastly different styles of play.

Matt York/Associated Press

Spieth’s success comes through smart course management and an uncanny ability to use his short game and putter to post a low score no matter how well he is striking the ball. He will rarely shoot himself out of a tournament and has demonstrated a level of consistency reminiscent to Woods in his prime.

McIlroy, on the other hand, is more of a power player. When he is driving the ball straight he has the ability to completely overpower golf courses and run away from his competition, as was evident by eight-stroke victories at both the 2011 U.S. Open and 2012 PGA Championship.

But like many power players, McIlroy lacks the short game and putting skills necessary to contend on a consistent basis. Since 2013, McIlroy has not ranked better than 44th on tour in strokes gained putting and has cracked the top 100 in scrambling just once (he ranked 88th on tour in scrambling in 2014). As a result, McIlroy’s success has come more in spurts.

McIlroy won the 2011 U.S. Open by eight strokes and then pretty much disappeared for nine months until the 2012 Honda Classic, which he won by two strokes over Woods and Tom Gillis. After a quiet summer his dominant form showed up again five months later in August 2012.

This streak lasted around three months and included a record-setting eight-stroke victory at the PGA Championship, wins at the first two FedEx Cup playoff events and the European Tour’s Race to Dubai title.

And then poof, he was gone again until the 2014 BMW Championship, which he won just days after calling off his engagement to tennis star Caroline Wozniacki. This set off another hot streak that included two major championships, the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and a second Race to Dubai title.

Although McIlroy’s game certainly lost some of its fire during the 2014-15 offseason, he had won three times, including a WGC event, finished within the top 10 at both the Masters and U.S. Open and appeared to be on the verge of yet another dominant run before going down with an ankle injury in June 2015.

Chuck Burton/Associated Press

This next generation in golf will be quite different than the last. In case you haven't come to terms with the obvious, there is no equivalent to Woods out there right now.

While Spieth has shown incredible consistency, and McIlroy has shown an ability to dominant his competition when he is on, Woods was consistently dominant, which is why he was able to remain the No. 1-ranked player in the world for 264 consecutive weeks between 1999 and 2004 and 281 consecutive weeks between 2005 and 2010.

As such, the top of the World Golf Rankings will likely remain a revolving door for the foreseeable future.

Spieth is certainly sitting atop the golf world right now based on his 2015 performance and his strong start to the 2016 season, but one would be quite foolish to overlook McIlroy as he begins his 2016 campaign this week in Abu Dhabi.

While McIlroy was present in the field at both of Spieth’s major championship wins in 2015, it was clear that his game was not in peak form. So for Spieth to retain his No.1 ranking he will inevitably have to take on the unenviable challenge of facing off against McIlroy during one of his hot streaks.

Considering that it has been more than a year since his last major championship victory, a healthy McIlroy is more than due for another dominant run in 2016. And if history is anything to go by, once McIlroy's next hot streak commences it is unlikely that Spieth or anyone else will be able to knock the four-time major champion off course, because when McIlroy is on top of his game he is still the closest thing golf has to an unbeatable force.  

This may be an overly optimistic view, but we could be about to witness a decade-long battle between Spieth’s consistency and McIlroy’s dominant streaks, with a few other top-tier players such as Jason Day, Dustin Johnson and Rickie Fowler occasionally being tossed into the mix.

So mark your calendars, folks, because this week in Abu Dhabi may just signify the start of a brand new battle for supremacy in the game of golf.