Rory McIlroy just achieved the career grand slam… here is what the Dallas Cowboys looked like last time someone did.
Rory McIlroy is at long last a Masters Champion. It took forever, but it finally happened.
Some are saying that if Rory can win a green jacket that the Dallas Cowboys can even win the Super Bowl. Whether or not that’s true certainly remains to be seen.
Maybe you have no idea what I am talking about. If you do not follow golf I imagine that you are at least somewhat familiar with The Masters, the most prestigious tournament that the game has to offer. Rory McIlroy has been among golf’s greatest and most successful stars for a decade and a half and prior to Sunday it had eluded him. That is no longer the case.
Beyond winning the coveted green jacket, McIlroy put himself in a different kind of sports immortality as The Masters was the last of golf’s four major championships that he had yet to win. Golf also offers the U.S. Open, Open Championship and PGA Championship. McIlroy won each of them early in his career and even won the PGA twice.
McIlroy’s most recent major championship was his second PGA which occurred in August of 2014. For some Dallas Cowboys perspective consider that Zack Martin was barely a rookie for the team and that he just recently officially retired.
McIlroy joined the most elite fraternity that the game of golf has to offer in terms of players who have won all four majors in their career, a feat that is often referred to as winning the career grand slam. Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods now have a sixth player in their club in McIlroy, although it had been a quarter century since the last addition was made.
Tiger Woods was the most recent player to accomplish the career grand slam and did so in 2000. With McIlroy doing so on Sunday we thought it would be fun to take a look at what the Cowboys looked like the last time golf saw this particular accomplishment in its sport.
Here is what the Dallas Cowboys looked like the last time someone completed golf’s career grand slam before Sunday
The final major championship that Woods won to complete his career grand slam was the Open Championship in 2000. To be more specific, it took place in July of that year.
The Dallas Cowboys were running on fumes at that time relative to their 1990s dynasty and in fact it was their first season of play without Michael Irvin on the roster since before it began. Deion Sanders and Daryl Johnston also did not return. It would wind up being Troy Aikman’s last one to boot.
With Irvin no longer present Jerry Jones was trying to extend the window of success that the Cowboys were getting far away from (imagine only being five years removed from a title game appearance!) and earned the wildcatter reputation that some still hold him to as he traded the team’s first-round pick (and the following year’s) to the Seattle Seahawks in exchange for Joey Galloway. Needless to say that did not work out well.
Tennessee cornerback Dwayne Goodrich was the team’s first draft selection and was taken in the second round what with the Galloway trade costing the team their first-round pick. While the NFL has become quite popular on an international level nowadays that was hardly the case in 2000, but the Cowboys did play a preseason game in Tokyo. It was a different time.
All told the Cowboys would only win six games across the 2000 season and saw it end on Christmas Day against the reigning AFC Champions in the Tennessee Titans (again, this was a long time ago). As far as the division was concerned the New York Giants won the NFC East and even reached the Super Bowl themselves, although they lost to Brian Billick’s Baltimore Ravens. Like I said… this was a very, very long time ago.
This was actually so long ago that the Giants won an NFC East that still featured the Arizona Cardinals as the league’s divisional alignment that we know today took place in 2002 when the Houston Texans joined. There had been no career grand slam in golf since prior to their existence!
As far as potential for future career grand slams the closest possible opportunity now officially belongs to Dallas Cowboys fan Jordan Spieth. All he lacks to this point is the PGA Championship, but his game has not necessarily been in a place as of late that would suggest this will happen anytime soon.
Whatever the case Rory McIlroy is part of the club himself now. Congratulations to him.
