Rory Mcilroy runs with 2 going to Masters on Sunday.
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Augusta, GA.-In his first masters, a 19-year-old Rory Mcilroy said something interesting.
“You are very excited you are here, but I will try to take that excitement and turn it into good golf,” he told the Irish interviewer Shane O’Donoghue. “Just try to get excited, and if I hit a bad blow, not to be worried – because I’m on the masters.”
Is a beautiful feeling, right? If I hit a bad blow, not to be worried – because I’m in the masters.
This Sunday, 16 masters and some lives later, you can throw it out of the window.
On Saturday, Rory Mcilroy Electrized Augusta National The crowd came out of the first goal shooting from a ball, starting Birdie-Eagle-Birdie and, for the first time in the history of Masters, 3-3-3-3-3. He jumped from T3 to the front, suddenly, from a whole package. He again gave a pair of bogeys in the middle of the round, but then he electrified the crowd again, making up and down for the birds at 13 and then hit a wonderful shot at 15 echoing large iron shoots in 15 Masters Champions and setting a Creek and Sent Raes. Savannah River. And doing so, he put himself in the best, most dangerous, most terrifying position of all: forward.
Sometimes golf broadcasters refer to the boy forward as The sole leader. Other times they will say something even more specific, and staggering:
He runs, alone.
This week’s shares were always high for Mcilroy. They are high in every major. They are higher in the masters. They are impossible higher than that now that he is THIS Close if you are a fan of sports, you know the training so far: Mcilroy is the biggest player of his generation, but he has not won a big championship in more than a decade. He is a big champion four times, but has never won the masters.
“No one, at all times, will not face as much pressure throughout the year that Rory reaches Augusta National,” Brandel Chamblee said before a golf stroke had been hit. Before Mcilroy shot 66-66 on Friday and Saturday to get the lead. Before becoming a clear betting favorite. Before it came to the threshold of victory. Before creating what it promises to be the biggest showdown the game could gather, its two players with the highest wave that battle in its highest phase with water.
This is the other element in the game here: Mcilroy’s opponent. We are only 10 months from Bryson Dechambeau breaking the heart of Mcilroy in last year’s US Open, a sequence of events that began with two short blows lost by Mcilroy and ended with Dechambeau epic up and down for par and title.
On Saturday, when Mcilroy’s Eagle Putt fell to 15, Dechambeau fell five shots after. But that bird 15. And then, when that bird 16, he turned and means-he fell in love with the largest gallery, loudly in the course, stripping his teeth and pressing his cheater green to green. His message?
“I’m still here,” he said in his oppressor after the round. “I will not go down.”
A stroke of birds from green to 18 provided it to be only two shots back. Not really relying.
The idea that Mcilroy is afraid of this moment is, of course, projection. Written written from a distance, from the point of view of a much smaller golf player with a much weaker mind. Mcilroy has not mentioned to be terrified. Not once. After Saturday’s round he was asked how he spent his Saturday night in 2011, when he held the master’s lead with 54 holes.
“That was 14 years ago. I have no idea. Again, I’m glad I have a short memory,” he said.
This Saturday evening he said he would try to do it during season 3, Episode 2 of “Bridgerton”, though he fell asleep during Episode 1 on Friday night.
But we know he is thinking about him. That he has spoken to Dr. Performance Coach. Bob Rotella, working in a mentality. That he has few phrases, “Mantra Cliche”, fused on the back of his backyard book. That he was swinging faster than he has all week on Saturday, only from anxious energy. That he will try not to check his phone until Sunday after the round. Of course he is thinking about him. How can you not?
A victory would change everything. It would give Mcilroy in the Grand Slam career, a feature reached only by Tiger Woods in this golf. It would give Mcilroy five diplomas, matching Brooks Koepka for most among his peers. Would delete all the narrow calls of the last decade; refinement of failures as high endings. This is what happens when you get a master; Has a multiplier effect. Mcilroy’s PGA Tour wins and his merit orders and his FedEx Cup titles would mean all much more when reserved with his biggest great title for all. Profit takes care of everything.
A loss? This pain is difficult to understand. It is completely reliable that Dechambeau will exceed Mcilroy on Sunday, that it will overcome it with brawn and brains and greatness in great time. Mcilroy may be lost in a terrible mistake, of course, but he can also lose without drowning. He could play well and not win. And another close call after a decade of narrow call, from this position, to that golf player, is hard to imagine. Consider this: Should Dechambeau win tomorrow he would have three degrees. That would be just one after Mcilroy. He would have a master. That would be a forward. Rory Mcilroy cannot lose this tournament.
At his press conference in front of the tournament, the pride of Northern Ireland foreshadows this exact scenario. He spoke about putting him in a position to feel that pain again.
“People, I think, instinctively as human beings, we sometimes hold them back because of fear of injury,” he said. “But I think after you go through it, after you go through those heart strokes, as I call them, or frustration, you reach a place where you remember how you feel and wake up the next day and you are like, ‘Yes, life goes on, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.” “
For mcilroy, life THERE continued. After Pinehurst and Lacc and St. Andrews and Augusta. Life has returned here.
“In recent years I’ve had a chance to win some of the world’s biggest golf tournaments and it has not happened enough,” he said. “But you dust off and go again.”
Dylan Dothier is an elderly writer for Golf Magazine/Golf.com. Native Williamstown, Mass. Dothier is a graduate of Williams College, where he graduated in English, and he is the author of 18 in Americawhich details last year as an 18-year-old living out of his car and playing a round of golf in every state.
