Rory McIlroy Misses Cut at Masters as Scar Tissue Continues to Build
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Rory McIlroy left Augusta National on Friday far earlier than expected, no explanation given, none really necessary.
What could he say?
Another optimistic drive down Magnolia Lane, another exit without a green jacket.
McIlroy shot 77 after a first-round 72. It was obvious early in the day he would not make the 36-hole cut. From one of the pre-tournament favorites to not even playing was another tough blow at Augusta National.
This is nine straight years now that McIlroy has arrived at golf’s holy grail, the site of the year’s first major championship (with an exception for the Covid-delayed edition in 2020) with a chance achieve the career Grand Slam.
Only Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods have managed to win all of golf’s major championships in their career. It has seemed inevitable that McIlroy would join them. At age 25, he had four major championships – two PGAs, a U.S. Open and a British Open.
And while he’s contended in several majors since, most notably the Open last year at St. Andrews where he hit all 18 greens in regulation on the last day and still came up two shots short of Cam Smith, the Masters remains a mystery.
“I would say the majority is mental or emotional struggles rather than physical,’’ McIlroy said earlier this week. “I've always felt like I have the physical ability to win this tournament. But it's being in the right head space to let those physical abilities shine through.
“It’s been tentative starts, not putting my foot on the gas early enough. I've had a couple of bad nine holes that have sort of thrown me out of the tournament at times.
“So it's sort of just like I've got all the ingredients to make the pie. It's just putting all those ingredients in and setting the oven to the right temperature and letting it all sort of come to fruition. But I know that I've got everything there. It's just a matter of putting it all together.’’
Once again, it didn’t happen. The bad name came Friday on the front side, where McIlroy bogeyed four of the first seven holes. But the real killer was Thursday when he was unable to take advantage of benign conditions and post a round under par.
McIlroy made five birdies on Thursday but also had a double and three bogeys. He got to 1 under for his round with birdies at the 15th and 16th but made a bogey at the 17th and shot even-par 72. The leaders were 7 under par. He had already dug a big hole.
“Just a little untidy in places,’’ is how McIlroy described it.
It marked the fifth straight time that McIlroy failed to break par in the opening round of the Masters. Starting in 2015, McIlroy has broken par just three times, with only one round in the 60s – a 69 in 2018.
That is the year he probably had his best chance to win since being in position for the career slam. He was in the final group with Patrick Reed, trailing by three. Reed bogeyed the first hole, and then McIroy hit his approach to 3 feet at the par-5 second. With an eagle putt to tie, McIlroy missed.
At the third, Reed birdied, McIlroy bogeyed, and that was the closest he got.
The signs seemed different this time. McIlroy missed the cut at the Players Championship, but he won in Dubai, contended at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and made a nice run at the Match Play, where he seemed to sort out a driver issue and started making putts.
He also traveled to Augusta National a few times to prepare for the course, playing 81 holes. He felt good, sounded good.
But the putts didn’t drop. He needed 30 putts in the opening round, 32 on Friday. Hitting just 20 greens out of 36 also didn’t help.
All of a sudden, McIlroy was in the position he could not be – playing from behind. And forcing the action around the home of the Masters is not a winning strategy.
“I’m feeling as sort of relaxed as I ever have coming in here just in terms of I feel my game is in a pretty good place,’’ he said. “I know the place just about as well as anyone. Good experiences, bad experiences, it all adds up at the end of the day, and you probably learn a bit more from those bad experiences, and I feel like I’ve done pretty well at sort of putting those lessons into play and being better because of them.’’
It all sounded good at the time. Made sense. Seemed as good of a reason as any to believe that this was McIlroy’s time.
McIlroy had a four-shot lead here through 54 holes in 2011, then made a mess of the 10th hole and ended up shooting 80. That was viewed as a blip, especially since he went on to capture the U.S. Open that year, blowing away the field.
A bunch of top 10s have followed, including a final-round 64 that led to a second-place finish to Scottie Scheffler a year ago.
There will undoubtedly be many more chances, but that scar tissue begins to build. Greg Norman never got a green jacket, nor did Davis Love III, David Duval or Ernie Els. They all seemed a lock at one point in their careers to be part of the Masters for life.
Nothing is guaranteed, of course, and McIlroy is well aware.
What more could he say?