Mcilroy: I will go on attack in bid to join the greats

RORY MCILROY has vowed to take the attack to Augusta National as he seeks to complete his career Grand Slam in style.

Six-time winner Jack Nicklaus and Rory’s former Ryder Cup captain Paul Mcginley claim a more calculated and conservative approach is the key to success in Georgia.

“It’s like the song says,” said the Dubliner quoting Kenny Rogers in The Gambler.

“You have to know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em.”

But the Ulsterman insisted he has learned from the scarring experience of blowing a four-shot lead in the final round in 2011 when he got too defensive.

And Mcilroy, who recorded his first win for 18 months at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, said: “I’m more comfortable this year. My game is in good shape and I’m confident in it.

“But sometimes I feel like I’ve given this course a little too much respect and I have got off to slow starts.

“Sometimes you plod away and you make your pars and think you’re doing okay, but you look at the board and you might be seven or eight back, when someone’s got off to a hot start.

“I just have never been close enough to the lead going into the last day to feel like I’ve got a real chance after that chance I had in

2011, and that’s me being too comfortable with missing chances and not taking my opportunities.

“So I think just about being that little more aggressive you can score very efficiently around here – and you look at Jordan Spieth who made 28 birdies around this place in 2015.

Mcilroy, 28, now regards his 2011 meltdown as a positive.

“I feel like it made me a better player, like it made me a better person, it was certainly a character builder,” he claimed.

He has played 90 practice holes and feels better prepared to handle the hype of winning his fourth different Major.

And Mcilroy, who reckoned Tiger Woods has “a great chance” to win, said: “Definitely coming into the 2015 Masters, that’s when I felt like there was a lot of hype coming off the two Majors the summer before. And going for the Slam the first time I nearly built it up in my head a little bit too much.

“I know what a win here would mean and where that would put me in history alongside some of the greatest.

“That would mean an awful lot to me.

‘‘But I have to try to clear my head of that and play good golf.”