McIlroy will never win the Masters
OPINION: Rory McIlroy will finish his career among an elite group of golfers.
The Northern Irishman’s name will sit alongside Sam Snead, Tom Watson, Lee Trevino, Byron Nelson, Raymond Floyd, Walter Hagen and Arnold Palmer. Unfortunately, that’s not the group he wants to be part of.
They are greats of the game but they are not the greatest.
Those golfers claimed three legs of the grand slam but couldn’t get that last win to put themselves in the pantheon alongside Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Gary Player, Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen.
And it’s now clear that McIlroy, too, is another to be fated to miss out on the tournament he wants the most.
Like Greg Norman and Ernie Els, McIlroy has a game almost tailor-made for Augusta. He drives it long, with a draw, and hits towering irons that land softly. He has a great short game.
But like Norman and Els, the 28-year-old Ulsterman seems to be snake-bit at Augusta.
The scene was set for McIlroy to complete his set this week. He was in the last group, the course was softer than usual because of rain which suits him – three of his four majors have been won in softer than normal major conditions.
Sure he was starting three shots back but it was three shots behind a player without a major, who had never even played in the last group. A player McIlroy could routinely put his tee ball 20 to 30 yards past. A player who is not in McIlroy’s class when it comes to talent and ball-striking.
And McIlroy had a two-shot buffer over his nearest chaser. He will likely never get a better chance to claim the Masters.
Instead, it was Patrick Reed who donned the green jacket after a gritty final round that illustrated the gulf between he and McIlroy.
Reed, too, didn’t have his best stuff on Monday but he never stopped grinding.
McIlroy, however, quit. Three shots off the lead, with two eagle holes still to come, McIlroy had quit by the 11th.
It was clear from his body language and the indecent haste with which he hit his chip after missing the 11th green right, that he’d decided it wasn’t his day and he just wanted to get it over.
It was a disgraceful performance from a golfer who then got a dream ride from the media over his capitulation, probably because he is such a likeable character.
The Masters is consistently the best of the majors because the back nine is made for great charges. Yet McIlroy managed just one birdie on the back to go with his two bogeys.
McIlroy is a great front-runner when his game is firing on all cylinders. But when things go bad for him he seems incapable of grinding out a decent score.
Jordan Spieth began the day nine shots back but never stopped believing he could chase down Reed, although he came up just short. That attitude is part of why he is almost certain to join the elite group with all four majors. Spieth has just the PGA title missing from his CV and it would be a brave person to bet against him winning the least of the four majors.
Phil Mickelson looks destined to stay in the same group as McIlroy with three of the four majors but at least he can hold his head high.
Five runner-up finishes at the US Open speaks to his record. He has made mistakes to lose, particularly at Winged Foot, but he has never stopped trying.
Reed famously defeated McIlroy in the Ryder Cup singles at Hazeltine in a brilliant display in 2016. McIlroy was supremely confident ahead of the final round at Augusta that he would reverse that defeat but instead Reed dusted him by three shots.
It sets up another fascinating duel at this year’s Ryder Cup with Reed certain to want to take on McIlroy again.
While the singles draw is supposedly blind there seems to be a willingness to match certain players.
However, now you have to wonder whether European captain Thomas Bjorn would want his best player matched against someone who seems to have his number.
And would Rory want to risk being humiliated again by a player he regards as vastly inferior? I suspect not.
That’s part of the reason why Reed has a green jacket and Rory will most likely never get one.