The Ryder Cup celebration didn’t end in Rome, at least not for Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy.
In the second part of an interview with The Irish Independent, they talk about their flight home to South Florida and then McIlroy inviting Lowry over for lunch the next day. A bottle of wine was opened. And then another. And lunch turned into dinner.
Captain Luke Donald soon joined them, as did Michael Jordan.
“Rory and Luke started texting him, and the next thing we’re sitting there drinking with Michael Jordan, just the four of us,” Lowry said. “He’s very much a pro-USA guy. I think it was the first Ryder Cup he hadn’t been to in 25 years, so we gave him a good slagging.”
McIlroy said Jordan stayed from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Among the topics: Pay for play, of course.
“He told a story about the U.S. basketball team, the Dream Team at the Olympics in ’92. ‘Do you not think I could have got paid to play in the Olympics?’” he said. ”‘These people are missing the point of what it means.’
“He saw the long-term value of winning an Olympics, and said he ended up doing way better than if he had taken money there and then.”
McIlroy said Lowry desperately wanted a photo of the group, but as a fellow sporting figure, “He doesn’t need that.”
“But ... myself, Rory, Luke and MJ sitting around talking about the Ryder Cup,” Lowry said. “Not really how I envisioned the celebrations.”
