Can Rory McIlroy Play a Masters 'Chess Game' to Finally Complete his Grand Slam?
After each of his first 13 appearances, Rory McIlroy has left Augusta National disappointed.
Some of those frustrations would make stepping on the property difficult the following year, yet McIlroy comes back again and again, thwarted every time.
On Tuesday, having returned for his 14th appearance, McIlroy wore a smile on his face and talked about how glad he is to be back, even to a venue where he has experienced his worst loss.
How does any player come back after leading in each of the first three rounds only to see his game unravel on the back nine, and with it his best chance to win a major at the time?
On Sunday afternoon in 2011, McIlroy game became completely unglued after he hit a tee shot so far left on the par-4 10th that he needed to take a drop from the cabins up on the hill.
It was a prelude to disaster, going from 11 under par and the final-round lead to 8-under after a triple bogey. Unfortunately for McIlroy his response was a bogey-double bogey, dropping the Ulsterman to 5-under after the 12th hole. With nothing left in the emotional tank, he finished with a 7-over 43 on the back nine.
“This is my first experience at it, and hopefully the next time I'm in this position I'll be able to handle it a little better,” McIlroy said then after the 80 in his first Sunday with a chance to win a major. “I didn't handle it particularly well today, obviously, but it was a character-building day, put it that way. I'll come out stronger for it.”
Just months later McIlroy, at 21, won his first major, the U.S. Open at Congressional Country Club, and would go on to win the PGA Championship in 2012 as well as another PGA and the British Open in 2014.
That run of four major victories over 38 months was impressive, with some starting to put McIlroy’s name in the same bucket as Tiger Woods, but since his last PGA Championship victory McIlroy has been successful in only winning golf tournaments — not majors. Now he comes to the Masters at 32 years old, searching not only for his first major since 2014 but finishing off a career Grand Slam.
“I'm maybe at a different stage of my life where back then golf was everything,” McIlroy said of his focus on golf in 2014. “It's still very, very important, but maybe back then I would think that — I don't know if I would feel like I was fulfilled if I didn't win one or whatever it is, but it's less pressure.
"I know if I play well, I'll give myself chances to win this golf tournament. It's just a matter of going out there and executing the way you know that you can and stick to your game plan and be patient and be disciplined and all the things you need to do around Augusta National.”
Patience and discipline are against McIlroy’s nature. Playing away from trouble, not firing at flagsticks and not being aggressive is what he called "a negative way to think, but it's the way to play around this place."
“It's as much of a chess game as anything else,” McIlroy said of how the to win around Augusta. “It's just about putting yourself in the right positions and being disciplined and being patient and knowing that pars are good, and even if you make a couple of pars on the par 5s, that's OK, and you just keep moving forward.”
McIlroy’s previous success at majors has come when he not only has made the cut in the tournament before, but generally played well with three of his four majors coming after top 5s or better.
He believes that missing the cut last week at the Valero Texas Open was a blessing in disguise, allowing him to work on his game and feel better about it rather than barely making the cut and playing the weekend out with little time to fine-tune.
Now McIlroy must take that good feeling he arrived with and overcome his tendency to play aggressively and force the outcome, or he will leave Augusta on Sunday disappointed again.
“I know if I play well, I'll give myself chances to win this golf tournament,” McIlroy said. “It's just a matter of going out there and executing the way you know that you can and stick to your game plan and be patient and be disciplined and all the things you need to do around Augusta National.”
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