McIlroy and ETSU: The story behind the golfer and his fleeting promise

Rory McIlroy: The Fleeting Chapter of a Future Number One in Collegiate Golf

In April, somewhere near Johnson City, Tennessee, Fred Warren, former head golf coach at East Tennessee State, couldn’t take his eyes off the television. He was watching Rory McIlroy, the young, golden-curled golfer he had first seen at 13 in Ireland, struggle to maintain the lead in the final nine holes of Augusta National.

Birdie. Bogey. Par. Double Bogey. Bogey. Birdie. Par. Birdie. Bogey. Playoff. Twenty-one years after Warren almost got McIlroy to play for him, the golfer was again testing the emotions of the former coach.

“I had a five-shot lead after 10 holes and you thought he was going to cruise”, Warren said. “And then, suddenly, he messes it up and you get so involved in the experience of watching it because it’s always been fascinating”.

Fred Warren

When McIlroy’s birdie putt on the playoff hole dropped, Warren’s phone started buzzing. Congratulatory messages flooded his inbox. Weeks after McIlroy’s victory, Warren couldn’t help but laugh when talking about the frenzy. “I started getting text messages from people within minutes saying, ‘Your guy just won!'”, Warren said. “I didn’t even coach him!”

For a brief moment in time, in a frame of a film from several decades, McIlroy was about to move to a small town between Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina. McIlroy’s brief commitment to East Tennessee State is barely a footnote in the epic story of one of the best golfers of his generation. But in Johnson City, this small fragment is not forgotten.

“He could have gone anywhere,” said Aaron O’Callaghan, who had a front-row seat to McIlroy’s rise in Northern Ireland. O’Callaghan was one of McIlroy’s playing partners on the famous day at Royal Portrush in 2005, host of this year’s Open Championship, when McIlroy shot a course record 61 at just 16 years old. “Life came at him very quickly once he couldn’t stop winning.” In recent years, the arrival of the transfer portal and the name, image, and likeness in college sports has diluted the meaning of the National Letter of Intent, which seals an athlete’s commitment to an institution. But, hanging inside the hallways of ETSU’s golf performance center in an emerald green frame, there is a two-page National Letter of Intent, a peculiar test that still retains its weight. The date of the letter is November 15, 2004 and, although McIlroy’s name and all the superficial information are written at the top, the signatures at the bottom, one from a 15-year-old McIlroy and the other from his mother, Rosaleen, have not yet faded.

Fred Warren: A Visionary of Collegiate Golf

Fred Warren was ahead of his time. The long-time East Tennessee State golf coach, who took over the position in 1986, quickly realized he needed to change his recruiting strategy. “We are a mid-level school, not a flagship school,” Warren said. “I realized that, with golf being a global game, I could find talent outside the United States, so I was probably one of the first coaches to go abroad.” “Fred realized he probably wasn’t going to get Tennessee’s best player,” O’Callaghan said. “But he felt that if he got the best player from Wales, the best player from Scotland, and the best player, maybe the second-best player, from Ireland or whatever, then he could be very competitive. And he proved it.” The first Irish player Warren recruited to play for the Buccaneers was JP Fitzgerald, who later became McIlroy’s caddie from 2008 to 2017. Warren didn’t stop there. He continued traveling to different regions of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, establishing a connection between the region and East Tennessee State. His work eventually brought commitments from players like Gareth Shaw, who later became an All-American at ETSU, and Cian McNamara. Both McNamara and Shaw (as well as O’Callaghan) were part of Ireland’s youth teams. So, when Warren recruited them and traveled to tournaments throughout the UK and Ireland, there was a name of a younger player that kept coming up. “They were the ones who told me about Rory,” said Warren. “I started watching him when he was about 13 or 14 years old. You could already see that he had it, whatever you want to say ‘he had it, he had it'”.

On one of his many trips to Ireland, Warren found himself watching 15-year-old McIlroy at the Portmarnock Golf Club in Dublin for the 2004 International Junior Championships, where he played alongside O’Callaghan and McNamara – the latter was already set to play for ETSU – and continued to stand out among older and bigger players.

“One thing I noticed that Rory had – and still has – is that you watch him and I use the term as if he started a bag of chips,” Warren said. “You think you’re going to eat just one or two and then you stay longer. So I was planning to watch him for two or three holes and I watched the whole round because it was very exciting.” Even then, it was already evident to Warren that McIlroy wouldn’t be in college golf for long. But if there was any chance that McIlroy and his family would consider the idea of playing for only one or two years, Warren knew he had as good a chance as anyone. After all, some of McIlroy’s closest friends were already destined for Johnson City. That day in Portmarnock, Warren walked with Gerry McIlroy around the course. When they got to the car park, Warren finally made his pitch. This, he thought, was his chance to sell the McIlroys on East Tennessee State. What Warren didn’t realize at that moment is that Gerry had already done his homework. They had already spoken with McNamara and Shaw, their parents too, about Johnson City and why ETSU was the right place for Rory. Even so, Warren delved into the subject. “Would Rory be interested in playing college golf?” Warren asked. “Yes,” said Gerry. “And he would like to play for you.”

Johnson City: A Magnet for Irish Talent

If you’re from Holywood, in Northern Ireland, where the population barely exceeds 11,000 inhabitants, the more than 73,000 of Johnson City may seem like a culture shock. But the peculiarity of the city is precisely what made it an easy choice for many young foreign players looking to perfect their game in the United States. The landscape also helps. “Johnson City is quite similar to Ireland in terms of terrain, with hills and cattle,” said O’Callaghan. “The people are very welcoming and, truly, they love their golf here, the small-town atmosphere is very attractive.” “It’s just not a place you want to go as a top-tier American golfer. But we, the ones here, don’t really know college golf,” Shaw said. “When you see the tournaments, you see the schedule. And then, when I first went, I went out and saw the practice. It was like, ‘Oh my God, this is incredible.'” Beyond a familiar face in Warren, a practice facility designed by Tom Fazio that, at the time, was rare for a college program, and a stellar schedule, what attracted Irish players like Fitzgerald, McNamara and Shaw was also what led McIlroy to East Tennessee State on an official visit in the fall of 2004. “Being in a bigger city, that would be a big disincentive for guys like me and Rory,” O’Callaghan said. “Here [in East Tennessee] the facilities are a kilometer from where the guys live.” Warren’s biggest recruiting tool was word of mouth among UK players, so when McIlroy arrived in Johnson City there wasn’t much convincing to do. “I think the appeal was going to a place with teammates I knew, who I enjoyed being with and where I could see it was a place to develop his game and take it to professional golf,” O’Callaghan said. “It met all his requirements.” Although Gerry and Warren had reached a verbal agreement on McIlroy’s commitment to Portmarnock, Warren knew very well that in recruitment nothing was certain until the pen was put to paper. As Warren recounts, one day, he called the McIlroy’s house to see how they were doing and McIlroy’s mother answered the phone. She told Warren that the head coach of Oklahoma State, Mike Holder, had recently called their house looking to speak with McIlroy. “They’ve won 12 national championships and [Holder] is responsible for eight of them,” Warren said. “It would be like Coach K calling one of your recruits.” Warren said Rosaleen tried to call McIlroy from her room on the phone, telling him that Holder wanted to speak to him. “She said Rory yelled: ‘Tell him I don’t need to talk to him. I’m going to ETSU,'” Warren said. “So that was the decision. Then, in November, he signed.” Even when McIlroy turned down other coaches and remained committed to Warren and ETSU, he couldn’t avoid what was happening: the more McIlroy played, the more evident it became to everyone, including himself, that he was ready, not just for college golf, but for the pros. That’s why O’Callaghan, Warren, and Shaw aren’t surprised at what McIlroy has become. “He was four and a half years younger than me, so at that stage, when I was 18, 19 years old, we were on par, so to speak,” Shaw said. “He hit the same distance, but he could hit it lower, he could draw it more. He could fade it more. He was a very confident person.” Everyone remembers the way he hit the balls during practice when they first met him at age 12 and how they sounded different. O’Callaghan remembers the time he couldn’t sleep because, at 15, he was going to face McIlroy, 12, in a match he thought he might lose. The 61 at Portrush that brought the whole town out to the course is, for them, impossible to forget. “I remember a bit of that. I don’t remember much,” McIlroy said this week when asked about that round. “It was certainly the first time I felt in the zone.” O’Callaghan recalls a particular moment in 2006, when he witnessed how McIlroy strung together four almost perfect rounds of golf that helped him secure the European Amateur Championship in Italy. “That week a PGA Tour event [the 2006 Buick Open] was being held and Tiger won by shooting 66 in each round,” said O’Callaghan. “And I remember we celebrated Rory’s victory and that he saw Tiger’s score and compared it to his. He was already trying to chase Tiger when he was 16 years old.” The writing for ETSU was already on the wall. O’Callaghan and the rest of McIlroy’s friends knew he was committed to Warren; they also knew that at that moment he was destined for greater things. In Johnson City, Warren also wondered if McIlroy would come. Then, he finally received a call from McIlroy who, according to Warren, had a message for the lifelong coach: I’m coming, but you can give my scholarship to someone else. Warren read between the lines and knew then that McIlroy was unlikely to ever wear an East Tennessee State uniform. There was disappointment, of course, but also a very clear understanding. McIlroy was a rocket. “There were no hard feelings,” Warren said. “He was such a kind person, and I understood the situation.” A few days after McIlroy’s call, Warren met with one of the school’s compliance directors and explained the situation. McIlroy was no longer coming to ETSU. As the director prepared to close McIlroy’s file, Warren made a final request. “Do me a favor, don’t get rid of that letter,” he said. “I think that young man is going to become the number 1 in the world.”

McIlroy’s Legacy at East Tennessee State

McIlroy may never have made it to Johnson City, but in the history of East Tennessee State golf, he is an essential figure. The domino effects of his decision to sign there and his decision not to play there endure to this day. In 2005, Jordan Findlay was willing to stay one more year in Scotland and wait for the right time and place to commit to a school. Then, Warren called. The ETSU coach knew that Findlay, winner of the 2004 British Boys Amateur Championship, was interested in moving to the United States, but there was a problem: Warren no longer had room for him. But once McIlroy seemed like he was going to stay abroad and eventually turn professional, Warren contacted Findlay and his family. He couldn’t give them the full scholarship that McIlroy was going to get, but he could offer them a spot on the roster that fall. Without knowing much more about Warren and the program than rumors and without having visited Johnson City, the Findlays headed to a familiar face. “My father was quite friendly with Gerry, Rory’s father, so he called him and asked for advice,” Findlay said. “We knew Rory had been on a recruitment trip there, so we did it blindly and trusted his judgment.” The decision turned out to be fortuitous. Findlay not only ended up playing for ETSU, but he stayed and still works and lives there to this day. “I’m going to give you a riddle as to why,” he said, before answering his own question. “I met my wife during my first week here.” The season following McIlroy’s unofficial departure, Warren also used the vacant scholarship left by McIlroy to help recruit and bring in another player from Ireland: Seamus Power. “You get one guy and it can lead to a dozen guys. And I think the familiarity of having people from a similar country or the same country was attractive,” said Findlay, who grew up in a town of 15,000 in Scotland. “It just became that the Scots and the Irish knew it. It was a friendly environment.” “It was a home away from home,” Shaw said. It was fitting then that when Warren retired last year, Power knew who to turn to to replace the Hall of Fame coach. The two-time PGA Tour winner and East Tennessee State alumnus was on the practice green at the Memorial Tournament in Ohio when he called O’Callaghan to see if he would be interested in the head coaching position for the Buccaneers. O’Callaghan never played for Warren (he ended up at Southern Louisiana), but he watched ETSU’s reputation grow in his home country and admired the Warren program from afar. The link between him and Power, him and McIlroy, and the way all their stories have intertwined their home country with this small Tennessee town, made the decision easier. “To be able to manage a program that means so much to your friends, to the people you grew up playing with and competed against and played for Ireland,” O’Callaghan said. “It’s a huge honor for me.” In these days, in Johnson City, the connection between the school’s golf team and the part of the world that raised McIlroy remains. O’Callaghan has continued Warren’s playbook; the current team has six players from all over Europe. There is a final year student from Denmark, a penultimate year student from Germany, a second year student from England, a final year student from Scotland and two young first year students – Gavin Tiernen from Dublin and Ben Oberholzer, who grew up in Belfast, a few kilometers from Holywood. “The circle has closed,” said O’Callaghan. “It’s very unique.” On Monday, McIlroy arrived early at Royal Portrush and played a practice round on his own. As he charted his way around the golf course he once conquered as a teenager, a robust crowd followed him, savoring the opportunity to welcome home their Grand Slam winner. Standing among them, watching every shot attentively, was Oberholzer.