He’s missed the cut (three times), he’s led after three rounds, he’s notched four top-5s and eight top-10s. There were years he was never really in it, others when he most certainly was. And there were years when you thought – surely, this time – Rory McIlroy will up and win the first major championship of the year, The Masters, at venerable Augusta National in Georgia.
While he’s not yet in Greg Norman areas for unrequited love, you’d have to agree, the bastard’s due.
Rory McIlroy’s first Masters was in 2009, when the 19-year-old qualified by storming into the OWGR top-50 following nine top-10s on the DP World Tour, including a win in the Dubai Desert Classic and a play-off loss in the European Masters in scenic Switzerland.
With six holes to play in the second round at Augusta, McIlroy had flown up the leaderboard and into sixth. But after leaving a shot in the bunker, he kicked at the sand in frustration, or to make like he was cleaning it up, maybe both. There followed a four-putt double-bogey on 16 and a triple-bogey on the last, before he signed off on the cut line, one-over-par.
Officials would later pore over footage of McIlroy’s work in the trap, before satisfying themselves – at 8:40pm, four hours and 25 minutes after he’d finished his round – that he hadn’t contravened Rule of Golf 13-4, which prohibits a player from testing the condition of a hazard before playing a stroke in the hazard.
He would finish T20.
In 2011, McIlroy led or co-led the Masters in each of the first three rounds, including holding a four-shot lead on Saturday night. After nine holes, his lead had been reduced to one shot, before the baby-faced kid from County Down hooked his driver into a tree, his ball cannoning off into areas never seen before on the television broadcast. After taking a drop off a rich person’s lawn, he hit another tree, took two more shots to reach the putting surface, before signing off for triple-bogey 7.
Perhaps he thought it could not get much worse.
But it could, oh yes. Indeed, there was carnage.
Three-putt on 11, four-putt on 12, water on 13 … gone, baby, gone. He would sign off with 80, T15; 10 shots behind Charl Schwartzel. And people thought, well, that can’t be much good for one’s mental health going forward.
It’s impossible to know the scar tissue McIlroy has carried since then – certainly it didn’t affect him two months later, when the 22-year-old led the U.S Open by eight shots after three rounds, and won by that margin to claim his first major championship.
A year later, he won the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island by eight shots. Two years after that he won the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool and the USPGA Championship at Valhalla. He then won the Players Championship. And the national championships of Scotland, Australia and Canada (twice). And the Fed Ex Cup (three times), the Tour Championship (three times), and the Race to Dubai (six freakin’ times).
This year he won the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach before adding a second The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass.
So, it’s safe to say, McIlroy knows how to win. And recently.
And yet … Augusta is a different breed of scalded cat. And we are all products of nature and nurture. Our experiences, good and ill, mould us, forge us, diminish us, paralyse us, wake us in the night with the sweats. And each time McIlroy cruises up through those mighty magnolias on the lane of the same name and sets foot on the venerable, gentrified, sanctified, old property, his muscle memory, however much he tries to forgive and forget, cannot help but hold fringe remnants of that horrendous back nine on the slippery BMX track greens of Augusta National at the 2011 Masters.
But then, it’s not like he’s ever curled in a ball and howled for his mommy.
There was an outright fourth in 2015 when his 14-under 71-71-68-66 would have won most years, instead of being six shots behind Jordan Spieth. In 2018 he was in the final group with winner Patrick Reed, but faded out with 74. In the cold, Covid-affected tournament in November of 2020, he shot 75 first round and finished T5, nine shots behind the runaway champion, Dustin Johnson.
But then, sports fans, came 2022, when McIlroy began the final round at 1-over; 10 shots behind Scottie Scheffler. And then stormed up the leaderboard like a Bitcoin bender.
He went out with four birdies for 32. He birdied 10 with a chip-in. He went around Amen Corner in two-under after an eagle on famous “Azalea”, the cool, sloping, right-to-left dog-leg par-5 13th. When he holed his bunker shot for birdie on 18, there was a “Tiger-like” roar from the gallery.
McIlroy described the cheers as “incredible”.
“I’ve never heard roars like that on the 18th green,” he said. “It was really cool.”
His 64 was the equal-lowest final round in Masters history. His outright second was his best finish in a major since 2014. He described it as “the most fun I’ve had on a golf course in a very long time”.
“The only person that beat me this week is the guy that’s currently the best golfer in the world [Scheffler], so I’m on the right track and I’m doing the right things and it was just nice to feel that buzz in a major championship again,” McIlroy said.
“It’s been a while since I’ve felt that.”
And then he said: “That is as happy as I’ve ever been on a golf course right there.”
Screw you, 2011.
Sure, he missed the cut in 2023. And, like everyone else, he was put to the sword by the ridiculous, indomitable Scheffler in 2024. But, you can’t shoot 32-32 at Augusta National in the final round of the Masters and not take some positive thoughts with you next time you’re standing there in the lead on 10.
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