AUGUSTA, Ga. – The course was almost cleared. The sun had almost set. And Rory McIlroy was strapping on his glove, pulling a wedge from his bag and dragging a ball into position, beginning the search for a simple layup on the immaculate turf of Augusta National’s empty driving range as a question hung in the air.
Where had his six-shot lead gone?
McIlroy was just minutes removed from a question-and-answer session with a group of reporters following his third-round 73, a lapse that left him within a share of the lead heading into Sunday’s final. McIlroy was honest, pleasant, good-humoured as he spoke, admitting he “didn’t have it at all” on Saturday and would have to do better on Sunday to have any chance of winning.
But what does that mean, not having “it” and allowing a historical margin to slip? Some of McIlroy’s answers addressed specifics, such as missed birdies on 8 and 9 or the breeze catching on No. 11, where he doubled. (“She was just slightly moved by the wind and went into the water.”)
There was also the matter of the boys in his rear view, crowding the birds in front of him.
“The quality of the chasing group is evident. There were a lot of guys who scored well,” he said. That included Sam Burns, who shot 68 on Saturday alongside him and Cameron Youngwho will be his playing partner in the final round after shooting 65 to catch him from eight shots back.
Other questions and answers were laid out more widely. McIlroy’s unsatisfying round had marred the satisfying storyline that he was playing so well because he won last year’s Masters and because that victory had extinguished a decade more of pressure and heartbreak; history had assumed that he would now be free to make another victory.
Not so fast.
“This golf course has a way of it — when you don’t quite feel it, you’re hard,” he said.
You can look at McIlroy’s sour day as a failure to follow his game plan, which was to keep the pedal down and continue to play on the attack. But while there were some changes, he would have liked to commit more fully, such as hitting 12 or 13, he said. PRINCIPALLY he had done well in the mentality department.
You can also look at his struggles as swing related; he has only hit half his fairways for the week and on Saturday struggled with a repeated lefty error with his irons. His approaches went left on the par-3 4th, on the par-3 6th, on the par-4 11th, on the par-3 12th, among others. They were not all the same, he said; some came from uneven lies or poorly executed three-quarter swings. But they were connected to a familiar issue.
“I think for me it’s just about keeping my lower body moving. If I can get my lower body moving through the shot, then that should fix it,” he said.
What makes golf so mystical is that the mental, physical and situational are so intertwined. It may sound silly, but McIlroy seemed to acknowledge that, indirectly, playing under the strange pressure of a six-shot lead at the Masters affected the way his lower body moved in the golf swing. And there is something to that media narrative, he added. Here’s what McIlroy had to say about his hopes for Sunday, hoping to get depressed:
“I’d like to think I’m going to play a little bit looser and play like I’ve already got a green jacket — which I do. Sometimes maybe I just have to remind myself of that,” he said.
And so McIlroy was, just minutes later, hitting ball after ball on the remains of a perfect spring evening. These seemed to fly effortlessly towards his target, a distant yellow flag. It is different in range compared to course; every golfer knows this. But it’s a good start. To play for free, you need to know that you can hit it where you’re looking.
It was fitting that only one other player remained on Augusta’s practice area as McIlroy’s session continued: Brooks Koepka. He, too, had written a disappointing day, although he improved it with a strong second nine. He left as McIlroy’s session continued; the two had a brief, pleasant exchange along the way.
Koepka, like McIlroy, has five majors, more than anyone else in the field. The two have played practice rounds together before, here and elsewhere. They chat at home in south Florida. They are different personalities, as golfers and otherwise. But both have won degrees and lost them too. They know that the good thing about the Saturday night session is that you still have a Sunday to show what you can do.
And they know it’s easier to understand the narrative once the story is fully written.
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