AUGUSTA, Ga. – As the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, enhancing the lighting in a cinematic Masters finish, two turtles crawled out of the pond guarding Augusta National’s 15th green.
They settled on the bank, and there they stood, still and unmoved, as the final pairings of the world’s greatest golf tournament played past. They seemed unimpressed by Scottie Scheffler’s bird and its accompanying noise. Unfazed by the last bird in Justin Rose’s brave, heartbroken charge. Unfazed by Sam Burns’ second shot, which bounced back into the pond, or his fourth, which sailed over their shells and created an impressive up-and-down level.
But as Rory McIlroy crested the hill and looked over the pond and climbed an awkward, hard-hitting approach to the final two of the day, I couldn’t help but think the turtles were the only ones unaware of what was at stake.
THIS WEEK SHOULD BE IT a winning lap for McIlroy. A year ago, at the same time and place, he slayed the dragon, climbed the mountain, lifted the weight of the world from his shoulders. This week he returned as a career Grand Slam winner, meaning for the first time in a decade and a half he could appear without expectations. He even kept his golf game under the radar, retiring with a back injury at Bay Hill and sitting T46 at the Players before sitting out the next three weeks as others took notice in his absence.
But then he arrived, jumped in, and did something stupid: He raised expectations again. He played a game of golf Friday afternoon so well that he took a six-shot lead into the weekend. Suddenly there was something to lose, something at stake in his victory lap. If he kept winning, it would prove everything he had done the year before. A blown bullet, on the other hand? That would bring up more stuff victory he was supposed to have been buried.
Then McIlroy gave away his lead on Saturday, converting all six shots on the course. He was the only figure left on the range that night, shooting balls into the sunset, looking again like a man trying to find something important. He entered Sunday tied atop a star-studded and suddenly crowded leaderboard, and when he stumbled out of the gate, hitting from five feet on No. 4, he was no longer atop the leaderboard.
But then he did what he does, roaring with brilliant approaches on 7 and 8 and – perhaps best of all – on 12, birdieing each time, regaining the lead as competitors waved around him. After he birds no. 13 he led by three. Now the tournament was his to win or, if you’re the glass-half-empty type, he’d give away.
And so, as he walked up to that wedge shot on No. 15, everything was suddenly at risk. All week he said he was trying to channel the freedom he unlocked a year ago, the freedom to already win this tournament. He didn’t mention the flip side: the scar tissue that comes with almost giving it away.
A year ago, that’s where it all went wrong, with a wedge shot on a par 5 second-nine. He putt up a perfect number that time, and he putt up a perfect number this time, 107 yards. Down and downhill was an ideal three-quarter wedge, McIlroy said later. But this is arguably the most infamous shot in golf, from a downhill slope to a tight green with short water and long problems. Which would win: freedom or scar tissue?
“I tried to make it 100, seven or eight short steps and just let it go up, which is a perfect three-quarter wedge for me with that little bit of (wind) help,” he said.
But it’s hard to judge contact from that lie, and it’s hard to judge how the wind will help a wedge. And so, as McIlroy’s ball left his club and flew through the air, the crowd saw its trajectory and gasped — everyone along the 15th fairway and those on the green and those on the hillside overlooking the adjacent 16th. It wasn’t flying far enough.
“Sometimes if you’re coming off a downslope, (15) is in a little valley area, and with the wedge especially with the wind, instead of the wind carrying the ball, it knocked it down and didn’t get it anywhere near as far as it should have,” McIlroy said later.
He was half right. It didn’t take him as far as he did TARGET that for him. Not as far as him wanted that for him. But she took it exactly as far as he did NEEDED barely landed on the front right corner of the green, skipping forward and, as the crowd held its collective breath, settled there.
“Thankfully it was closed,” McIlroy said. “It was so close to being back in the water. Thanking my lucky stars with that one.”
The tour wasn’t technically over, but the danger was behind it. He walked to 16 with a two-shot lead and the crowd went with him, wanting him to a par there and another at 17, allowing him the latitude to bogey the 18th.
And now it doesn’t matter, the wedge shot he barely kept. It doesn’t matter because He did carry. It didn’t matter anymore when he hit the 18th green as he stretched his arms to the sky as he hugged the people who matter most on the tour who mean the most.
His parents were there, behind the green, where he had missed them last year and I felt their embrace this time. So was his wife, Erica, and his daughter, Poppi. And at the end of a long, tearful, triumphant walk were his friends, his peers, Tommy Fleetwood and Shane Lowry and their caddies and their families and the members of Augusta National. And as they embraced him, one by one, a crowd of patrons stood gathered just beyond the ropes, taking in the stage, desperate to soak up the last rays of the sun and the last moments of this Master, all grateful to have this proximity to joy, to dreams, to greatness.
