Rory McILroy almost smothered the masters in three different sections only on Sunday.
However, I think of the second plan on the 15th par-5, and I cannot access the part of my brain that dispens Snark.
“He didn’t even do the eagle putt that set up!” You can crack. “He has always blown it!”
Of course. Cool. The second blow on the No. 15 did not win the masters, but he absolutely removed it from a fall and allowed him to stop giving the masters.
And with this fifth major victory – ending his career at the Grand Chelem and capping a week when he carded four doubles, two Thursday and two Sunday – McILroy deleted any doubt that he is the biggest golfer we have seen since Tiger Woods. Resilient and complicated and human that he, McILroy belongs to the pantheon of the greatest golfers of all time.
We want our sports stars to be difficult. Returning from “adversity”, as we label its many forms, is something that we consider important for our stories. Woods himself was a golf machine in the early 2000s and became much less robotic, much more sympathetic, when he recovered from a series of injuries and personal errors to win tournaments again in the late 2010s.
Think of the failures that McILroy had to endure and the ridiculous he received from a pocket of golf fans. A drought of the major championship of almost 11 years. Sulfing on Sunday, the United States in 2023 and 2024 open – the latter in Bryson Dechambeau, a golf face Liv and his game partner on Sunday. McILroy lost fans throughout the PGA-Liv melodrama, and for a while, the weight of this civil war also affects his golf course.
To open the final round of the Masters with a double bogey – to immediately put your cushion with two strokes on Dechambeau – prompted a “here again” of his supporters and detractors. But, indicating the evidence, it also made convincing television: much better to watch a potential train accident than a flight victory.
He returned to the head of the head to make a bogey at n ° 11, another double at n ° 13 and a bogey at n ° 14. He officially lost his head, dropping one behind Justin Rose and Ludvig Åberg. And with the burden of all that is mentioned above, we were in spiral mode.
With the fence leg of Amen Corner, McILroy headed for his ball under a low tree branch and struck a powerful draw which curled up right to left around the tree, wore the water and hit the green, rolling at 6 feet from the cup, where he has two ropes for blade.
The next plan of his life – he had three or four Sunday afternoons – was his perfect approach to n ° 17 which settled at 2 feet distance, by installing the Birdie which put it back in the head in solo.
Of course, it did not facilitate things for itself, missing a peer of 5 feet to win the green jacket in regulation – the third “strangulation” of the day. He gave his pink boyfriend a chance in playoffs, and after Rose struck his approach at 15 feet, McILroy turned his back at only 4.
“One of the strangest rounds I have ever seen,” said CBS advertiser Jim Nantz at that time.
For each breaking error, McILroy had an answer.
Because this is how McILroy finally won the Masters – several major errors, a drama composed up to 11 – there are still about 30 LIV robots on Twitter who laugh at him. But I would discuss by raising your bad holes and by going to the next one, it is what the golf course is, that you buffer it around the county course or that you argue at a major.
I think that is what is so attractive in what McILroy achieved Sunday, and why so many people have settled to look at what will happen as one of the best masters of all time.
Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson and Phil Mickelson came below a career slam. The list is Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods – and Rory McILroy.