Rory McIlroy: The Exception to the Rule

Pick a golfer currently ranked inside the top 10 of the Official World Golf Ranking – or your preferred alternative system – who you’re confident will still be there a decade from now. History offers a clear lesson: trying to predict the best golfers in the world years down the road is a near-impossible task.

On this date in 2015, the top 10 read as follows:

Jordan Spieth, Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, Bubba Watson, Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson, Rickie Fowler, Dustin Johnson, Jim Furyk, and Zach Johnson.

The majority of those names haven’t made meaningful noise on a leaderboard in quite some time. Today, only two of them remain ranked in the top 40 in the world. Following an incredible 2025 escapade, Rose occupies the No. 10 spot at age 45. The other name, of course, is the lone exception to the rule, the only golfer who has been a consistent fixture in the top 10 for more than a decade: world No. 2 Rory McIlroy.

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Since first breaking into the top 10 of the OWGR in 2009, McIlroy has spent at least some portion of every calendar year inside it, with only brief visits outside. He has logged 777 of the last 834 weeks as a top-10 player, the third most weeks of all time. Other prominent contemporaries of McIlroy – Rose, Johnson, Sergio Garcia, and Adam Scott – have sustained relevance across multiple decades of the 21st century. However, none but McIlroy have played to a consistently elite standard throughout nearly every stretch of an uninterrupted 15-plus-year run. His longevity in the modern era is unrivaled.

On Sunday, McIlroy finished runner-up in the DP World Tour Championship after a playoff loss to Matt Fitzpatrick, clinching his seventh Race to Dubai title. The honor moves McIlroy past Seve Ballesteros and within one of Collin Montgomerie’s all-time record (eight). "It seems within touching distance now. I was the first European to win the Grand Slam and I'd love to be the winningest European in terms of Order of Merits and season-long races,” an emotion-filled McIlroy said after the win. "I've hopefully got a few more good years left in me, and hopefully I can catch (Montgomerie) and surpass him."

His Race to Dubai title is merely the latest addition to one of the most impressive seasons of McIlroy’s career, one that includes the final leg of the career Grand Slam, a Ryder Cup victory on away soil, wins at Pebble Beach and TPC Sawgrass, another Irish Open, and now a seventh Race to Dubai title. Rightfully, major championships are the ultimate barometer of a professional golf career. To be clear, McIlroy’s five major championship total is nothing to scoff at. But reducing one’s career solely to a major championship tally fails to capture the breadth of a résumé like McIlroy’s, one that spans continents, eras, and competitive tours.  

Whenever the day comes that McIlroy holes his final putt and hangs up the spikes for good, his 2025 season will serve as an appropriate reference point that reflects the full scope of his brilliance, a season most golfers could only ever dream of, delivered 18 years into his professional career.