Barrtalk: Rory continues to be a nerve-jangling must-watch

As someone who has been privileged to follow the career of Rory McIlroy over the last decade-and-a-half or so, I was, of course, ecstatic to see the County Down man land a second consecutive Masters title last weekend.

You wait for eleven long years for the next major, including umpteen near-misses, heartbreak and meltdowns, and then two come along in the blink of an eye. Isn’t it just always the way with these things?

Watching McIlroy play golf continues to be one of the great sporting joys of my life, though it’s definitely not good for the nerves at my age.

I was sweating buckets right up until the final hole at the Masters, when he decided to pull the driver and whack it deep into the trees, testing his two-shot lead to the limit and fraying our collective nerves even more circa midnight in Inishowen.

Why does he never play the percentages and take an iron for safety in those spots? I guess it’s that fearlessness that makes him so great, not to mention so watchable: The proverbial roller coaster of emotions. Anyway, all’s well that ends well, to lean on another cliché.

The accolades just keep on coming for Rory, who’s now the undisputed greatest ever European golfer, the sixth ever grand slam winner, and only the fourth man ever to win back-to-back championships at Augusta, joining illustrious company: Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo, and [who else?] Tiger Woods.

With all these superhuman records and a relentless run to golfing immortality, you’d think McIlroy would be bulletproof in terms of ability by now. But not so.

The excellent new Amazon Prime documentary ‘Rory McIlroy: The Masters Wait’, which has just been released, offers a rare insight into the vulnerabilities of the man [as well as being perfectly timed to make a fortune for Amazon].

Rather than presenting McIlroy as an untouchable sporting icon, the film emphasises doubt, and the psychological toll of elite competition, even if it is a tad too polished.

It’s actually McIlroy’s incredible and relentless willingness to go through the worst of failures that fuels his success. He speaks of how he’d endure a hundred heart-rending losses and more to win one more major – and he’s now got his eye on multiple titles ahead.

Though spare a thought for us poor fans too, Rory; I don’t know if my heart will survive another near-loss.

In fact, come to think of it, the near-wins are almost just as unbearable, too, even though they have a happy outcome in the end.

And finally, I can’t possibly write a piece about McIlroy without pointing out that, like me, he’s a lifelong Man Utd fan. Speaking of emotional rollercoasters, just like Alex Ferguson once said of his United team, that they never do things the easy way, the same could be said for Rory.

American prison sentences are more just than ours

There are many things not to envy about the financially skewed US justice system, but I have to admire the length of the sentences they hand down to the very worst of criminals.

Despite my liberal leanings, I also tend to agree with the use of the death penalty in the most heinous of cases.

I caught an interesting new documentary about a triple murder and rape in Ohio in 2010 on Disney+ in recent days, ‘Basement Vanishing in Apple Valley’, which centres on the disappearance and murder of two women and a little boy.

Without giving too much away, the evil killer of the piece, Matthew Hoffman (above), eventually accepted a plea deal to tell the authorities where he had stashed the bodies in return for not having to face the death penalty.

He ultimately pleaded guilty to aggravated murder, kidnapping, and other charges to avoid death row. As part of his sentencing, he received life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Hoffman is now serving his time at the Toledo Correctional Institution, a high-security state prison in Ohio. And when the Yanks say life with parole, they mean just that. None of this being eligible for release after fifteen years rubbish.

An investigating police agent at the end of the documentary explained how he had just checked Hoffman’s expected release date before being filmed for an interview.

The cop couldn’t help but smirk as he told viewers how the triple murderer is scheduled for release on January 1st, 8,888.

By my count, that means that Hoffman has another 6,861 years – or 2,505,929 days – left to serve in prison. And quite right too.

AI is plagiarising us, never mind vice versa!

And finally this week, I asked our nemesis AI for its best joke about us Irish people – and this is what it came up with.

It’s an oldie, but a goodie, and certainly not original. How about we humans start cracking down on AI for its use of plagiarism, rather than vice versa!

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Anyway, here’s the joke . . . An Irishman walks into a pub and orders two pints of Guinness. The bartender serves them, and the man drinks from one, then the other, back and forth.

Curious, the bartender asks why. The man says, “I’ve got a twin brother back in Australia. We promised we’d always have a pint together, no matter where we are.”

The bartender is touched, and this goes on for months. One day, the man comes in and orders just one pint, which he begins to drink. Worried, the bartender asks, “Is everything alright with your brother?” The man replies, “Oh, he’s grand. I just gave up the drink for Lent.”