Rory Mcilroy’s Masters Keyelal was taught in the past heart strokes

In June 2023, Rory Mcilroy went to the podium in the Los Angeles Country Club with the anxiety of loss on his face. He had just come out a short shot in 2023 US OPEN as a weak wedge blow with weak time and a cold ice putter dedicated a chance to catch his big drought.

“When I finally win this other major, it will really be, really sweet,” Mcilroy said Sunday in Los Angeles. “I would spend 100 Sundays like this to get my hands in another big championship.”

This was 11 months after Cameron Smith tracked him Sunday at the 2022 open championship in St. Andrews. It was 12 months before a mental loss cost him 2024 US Open at an agony loss in Pinehurst No. 2.

“I would spend 100 Sundays like this to get my hands in another big championship.”

Of course, it was not always so for Rory Mcilroy in large championships. The disappointments were once few. Fracture of the heart contained a special scar under the surface of a flowering career. Fear of pain was once something that rarely, if ever, had a mind.

These were the days when Rory Mcilroy was a Supernova Prodigy-a Wunderkind with long bombs driven by the invincibility of youth.

He had an early landslide in the PGA 2010 championship before the Masters Maters Melt 2011 This still scares it. But the Northern Irishman seemed to turn on quickly, traversing the field to the most part to win the US Open 2011. The following year, he rolled on the Kiawah Island to win the PGA 2012 championship. Two years later, he captured the open championship and another PGA. He was 25 and on a golf rocket boat in a large championship stratosphere that few live.

There is a stuck trip and has remained frozen in place for a decade.

Rory Mcilroy is now 35 years old, with gray hair in his temples and the weather of the experience adjacent to his forehead. it has achieved monumental things in golfAnd yet, he has not been able to understand what covets me again. The paradox of being Rory Mcilroy. Any achievement he provides CAPACITY questions about what he did not realize.

Mcilroy is back to Augusta National this week For his 11th swing in Grand Slam career. He is playing the best golf in the world and statistically is a more complete golf player than at any point in his guarded career.

There is every reason to believe this time Mcilroy will finally justify his demons into a course that is both a shelter and a constant reminder of what may have been.

But if he is to conquer Augusta National, it will need more than perfectly controlled handcuffs, a short immaculate game and rare running skills.

To win, Mcilroy will have to bend in a lesson he learned years ago when he arrived at large championships and play not to fail. With the naivety of young people, Mcilroy was protected from what could happen instead of putting himself there to embrace what could happen.

Since 2019, Mcilroy has decided to no longer worry about the pain they can bring four days to large championships. Being close is teasing, but he now knows he will not achieve what he wants if he is afraid to fall.

The only way to pay the mountain is to focus everything on climbing.

“I think it’s a self-preservation mechanism,” Mcilroy said Tuesday in Augusta National. “Just more than you are trying not to put 100 percent of yourself there because of this. It happens in all the spheres of life. At a certain point in one’s life, one does not want to fall in love because they do not want to get their hearts broken. People, I think, instinctually as human beings, we hold back because I think I am aware.

“But I think after you go through it, after going through those heart strokes, as I call them, or frustration, you go to a place where you remember how you feel and wake up the next day and you are like, yes, life is not as bad as I thought it would be on the big ones, and I have not happened in the last years, Golf in which it has not happened all over the world, and there is not so much in the world.

The year began with Mcilroy discussing how he planned to imitate the management of the Scottie Scheffler course. It wins at Pebble Beach and TPC Sawgrass followed, making the Scheffler of Mcilroy a popular story.

On Tuesday, Scheffler was asked what he would like to get from Mcilroy’s game.

“Rory, I feel like there has always been someone who has played really loosely,” Scheffler said. “All the time I have played with him, he swings him really hard, and I feel like he does a really good job to play for free and playing loose times.”

This freedom, whether at a wicked pace with a driver or a safe walk after a bird barrage, is the product of an extraordinary talent combined with the dispute from the unknown.

Golf, like life, is full of unknowns. Has not predicted what the shake or the next day will bring.

You just have to be ready to put yourself there and accept what comes in your way. Otherwise, you will only regret.

For the greats of all time like Mcilroy, there is no time for regret. Scars will accumulate as evidence that you were constantly in the war. That is okay because emptying the tank and failure is acceptable. This is life. But not being willing to go out to a limb to achieve what is inaccessible to most is unacceptable.

Rory Mcilroy knows he may not win the 2025 masters. But he also knows that he has all the tools needed to win it. He always has.

And so, Rory Mcilroy is ready to go again, hoping that the end will be different this time.